Nuke the damn oil leak!!

[leftysergeant]

You may not agree that corporations should have human rights but Don Blankenship does have human rights. Tossing him in jail and liquidating all of his assets violates what constitutional amendment again?

Of course he has the right to stand trial for murder one before they throw him in the hole.

Corporations have no rights. Some law clerk diddled a SCOTUS ruling and some right-wing idiots thought it was part of the decision and we have been getting screwed ever since.

Criminal coproations need to be liquidated and those who make the decisions that cause human deaths need to go down with the corporations.

If the next BP effort fails, they should be kicked out of the way of anyone else who has an idea.

BTW, has anybody checked to see whether they have a BOP on their relief well? If not, more compost is probably about to hit the fan.

 

[geni]

Lefty: You know, you're not doing _any_ liberal a favor here. Just.. please.. stop. There is no sane reason to do anything more than heavily fine BP, refine the regulation process, and move on.

In fairness if you are going to fine BP you are going to have a hard time justifying not doing the same to other oil companies.

 

[geni]

BTW, has anybody checked to see whether they have a BOP on their relief well? If not, more compost is probably about to hit the fan.

There are two relief wells. Last anyone checked 1 was fitted with a blow out preventer and drilling on the other one was halted because they had removed the blow out preventer for posible use in stopping the leak.

 

[PixyMisa]

New Zealand. San Marino. Monaco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_land_wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco#History

San Marino I'll grant you.

 

[PogoPedant]

The part about "extinguishing" the corporation as the best solution..

As an aside, that was a really poor interpretation of "primary source".

 

[Nova Land]

Extinction of the corporation and imprisonment for executives who know they broke the law sounds pretty effective to me.

This is, quite literally, a quote from Lenin...

If this is a literal quote from Lenin, could you provide a primary source in which it appears?

The part about "extinguishing" the corporation as the best solution.

What I asked for was a primary source. Instead of providing a primary source for the sentence you quoted, you appear to be trying to cut the sentence down to a single word.

So, let me see if I understand you correctly now. When you said "This is, quite literally, a quote from Lenin", what you meant was simply The word extinguishing is, quite literally, a quote from Lenin?

If all you are saying is that leftysergeant used the word extinguishing and that Lenin once used it too, that seems rather trivial. So I assume you are trying to say something a little more substantial than that.

It looks like you misspoke when you called what leftysergeant wrote a literal quote of Stalin. Perhaps what you meant is that it is a figurative quote -- i.e. that the thought expressed is close to a thought which Lenin expressed. If so, you need to provide the text of the Lenin quote you have in mind, so the rest of us can judge whether it is indeed a close approximation of what leftysergeant said. If you are aware of such a quote in Lenin's writings, please provide a link to a primary source for it.

As for them being arrested: you know as well as I do LS doesn't care if the executives are actually guilty of anything...

No, I don't know that. Not being a mind-reader, I only know what leftysergeant has written in the posts of his which I've read. The sentiment you express does not appear in the sentence of his you quoted, or in the post from which that sentence comes.

Leftysergeant's sentence -- the one you quoted, and which you claimed is a literal quote from Lenin -- clearly and specifically refers to "executives who know they broke the law".

You seem not to get along well with leftysergeant. Is it possible your emotional reactions are causing you to read things into his posts which you think is what he must really mean, even though they are not things he actually said?

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

geni: Yes, I am in favor of fining any oil company that neglects safety and prevention measures. Don't think I'd go so far as to liquidate the corporation.

lefty: Wrong, that's rather implicit in the original decision. I don't like it either, but ..

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

For LS, evil capitalist pigs have no human rights.

Say "peegs" instead. It adds the cache of conjuring the image of a posturing Cuban soldier, a ceiling fan in the background leisurely swirling the smoky air of the cell.

 

[technoextreme]

Sooner or later, they need to be arrested and tried for murder any way. And they have made it worse by injecting the dispersants into the oil and spreading the spill through the water column.

Had government been doing its job, kicking rather than kissing the butts of the corporations, we wouldn't have this problem. That is the fault of the conservatives who think that industry should regulate industry. If my position in this regard is Communist, then Communism is more logical. You have a few million gallons of laissez-faire capitalism stinking up the Gulf Coast now.

Obama needs to rely more on the scientific communioty and less on the industry that just crapped on our carpets.

The reason being that industry can regulate itself is because your insane rantings actually have basis in reality. Criminal liability is shifted directly onto the people who have the power to do the most harm. Not the executives you [Rule Violation] but the engineers. The engineers are the people with the power to stop and actually commit fraud. Not the evil executives you are ranting about. Its the engineers fault. Lets repeat this again. If criminal liability is to be found it will be with the engineers who signed the legal documents. REPEAT. ITS THE ENGINEERS FAULT.

No, I don't know that. Not being a mind-reader, I only know what leftysergeant has written in the posts of his which I've read. The sentiment you express does not appear in the sentence of his you quoted, or in the post from which that sentence comes.

Considering the fact that he doesn't even know who is legally responsible is a huge indicator that he doesn't care.

 

[funk de fino]

You really think saying the impacts will last 50 years is sensationalist? My but what an optimist you are.

Yes, I do. Absolute poop.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

Neat. I didn't know that blowing up stuff was actually a feasible solution. I was talking about this with some people yesterday and I suggested maybe detonating some TNT around the hole to hopefully get the rock to collapse down and plug the hole.

I'm the best.

Anyways, I think Obama was stuck between a rock and some dynamite on this one. The whole volte face on gulf drilling was, I think, a sop to the right after the healthcare vote. Already being labelled a socialist for that, when the BP thing happened Obama may not have had the political capital necessary to shove BP out of the way... it would have been spun by the right as another Big Government piece of his insidious Communist plot.

Furthermore, by pushing BP out of the way, Obama would stand to lose the necessary engineering talent that works in BP (how easy is it really to sideline management but retain their skilled workers' loyalty? how far 'down' the ladder can you go to excise the part of the organization that cares primarily about profit before you start cutting into the top tier talent?).

Lastly, this thing looks like a real doozy... if Obama had pushed BP out early on, the leak disaster would be getting blamed entirely on the Gov't... 'another case of gov't incompetence', the right would chant... as it is, the right is trying to spin this into an 'Obama is incompetent' thing, but at least they can't spin it into 'Obama is incompetent and his reliance on big government made this mess when the market would have fixed it.'

That's my take on the politics of the situation.

In terms of the policy of the situation, I don't know what really could have been done better. If scientists/engineers within the US bureaucracy had ideas for stopping this that were suppressed in order to allow BP to do its thing, then that would definitely seem to be a mishandling of the crisis. But I haven't seen anyone that says they were.

 

[Skeptic]

Say "peegs" instead. It adds the cache of conjuring the image of a posturing Cuban soldier, a ceiling fan in the background leisurely swirling the smoky air of the cell.

You're a fan of Woody Allen's Bananas, aren't you?

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

You're a fan of Woody Allen's Bananas, aren't you?

Just what are you insinuating sir?

I'll have you know I'm happily married, to a woman!

 

[KingMerv00]

You know what?

I originally wrote a stream of crap trying to sound clever and debate this point...

If you are going to support stereotypes, you'd better be ready to defend them.

What of Americans who want to cut military spending? What of those Americans who don't want to "nuke the damn oil leak".

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

If you are going to support stereotypes, you'd better be ready to defend them.

What of Americans who want to cut military spending? What of those Americans who don't want to "nuke the damn oil leak".

They are politically impotent.

We had millions of hippies waving flowers in the streets, and 4 decades later the hawks still own the nest.

In fact, not only are the guys in government as gung-ho as ever, but the press has about given up and rolled over too, which makes things SEEM worse than ever because the real wackos don't even feel the need to hide how nutty they are any more.


If my earlier wording is the thing bothering people, I will happily concede a change from 'Americans' to 'America'. It's the entity, not all of its citizens.

 

[Tricky]

Say "peegs" instead. It adds the cache of conjuring the image of a posturing Cuban soldier, a ceiling fan in the background leisurely swirling the smoky air of the cell.

You mean (gasp) El Puerco???!!

 

[leftysergeant]

lefty: Wrong, that's rather implicit in the original decision. I don't like it either, but ..

From reading the original decision and from what Thom Hartmann has cited from the writings of the Chief Justice at the time of the decision, I conclude that the law clerk, a corporate shill heavily vested in the railroad industry, took some serious liberties with the head notes when the decision was recorded.

The court specificly refused to discuss whether corporations were persons under the 14th Ammendment and thus entitled to due process of the law. The court assumed that they were entitled to due process but did not tie that in any way to the 14th Ammendment. No rational human being could do so. But, because corporations are people's property, other provisions of the consttitution require due process before siezing or taxing them. Thus, I would conclude that any subsequent decision based upon the notion that corporate personhood is stare decisus was made in error.

If corproations are, for now, to enjoy the advantages of personhood, they need also to face the possibility of utter ruin when they commit heinous violations of the law. Fining them does not seem to stop them from doing things that must inevitably lead to the loss of human lives. The fact that some of the BP scum have ordered people not to wear respirators is proof of that. Obviously, the supervisors should be charged unless they roll over on whoever gave them the order, and those people should be arrested and charged as well, no matter how high up the food chain it goes. The penalties obviously need to be more severe as you go up the chain of command because of greater culpability and reduced vulnerability of the actors. If it becomes an obvious feature of the corproate culture, then the corporation must, in the interest of public safety, be forced to comply with the regulations or cease operation and be criminally charged wirth any crimes against individuals harmed. An affirmative order not to wear protective gear is not negligent. It is intentional, and constitutes depraved indifference to life. Obviously, these corporate fools are not going to get the point until people start going to jail, and if the suits are making first-line supervisors dfo this to workers, then it is the suits who should be waving bye-bye to the first line supervisors from INSIDE the razor wire.

And when the corporation so mangaes to infiltrate and cortrupt a government regulatory body as BP and like companies did, at cost of human lives, it is essential to the survival of a democratic nation that that corporation cease to exist. Nothing short of the possible extinguishment of their treasure is going to impress these idiots and make them act like decent human beings.

 

[KingMerv00]

If my earlier wording is the thing bothering people, I will happily concede a change from 'Americans' to 'America'. It's the entity, not all of its citizens.

Well that's a completely different proposition.

 

[BenBurch]

In the (vain) hope of getting this thread back on topic, did the Soviets do this a mile under water?

No, but given their results (you'd need their help with that part) you should be able to compute the forces involved and know if it ought to work or not.

As I understand it, what you would try to do is couple the explosion strongly to bedrock far enough away from the well to not include it in the cavern or crater its going to make.

The impulse through the rock is what would expected to make the borehole collapse.

The point being that for certain very large civil engineering jobs, its not rational or reasonable to fail to consider whether a nuclear device might be the right choice for the job. Maybe it won't work here, but you should consider if it could.

 

[Tricky]

It's good to see that not all of the media is succumbing to the frenzy.

When confronted with such crises, corporate executives instinctively head for the bunker, withhold information, deny responsibility and drag their feet on efforts to clean up the mess they've created. That's a natural human reaction, particularly when people have died, jobs are on the line, the stock price is plummeting and the whole thing is playing out 24/7 on cable television. This bunker mentality is further encouraged by the army of lawyers who inevitably show up on the scene, whose sole concern is preventing criminal sanctions and reducing civil damages.
But to their credit, rather than respond in ways you would expect them to, BP and its executives have generally responded in ways you'd want them to.

From the start, the company has declared that it is ultimately responsible for what happened and responsible for making things right, waiving any liability limits it might be entitled to under federal law.

The company's chief executive, Tony Hayward, moved from London to the gulf, personally overseeing operations, visiting with government officials and conducting regular news interviews where his contrition seemed genuine.
{snip}

The article is balanced and it does not absolve BP from any blame, but their response has been exemplary.