[quote="$1"]
Seize and freeze are different in very different ways. Yogi Bearra would enjoy that one Boo Boo.
I'm far from being a pie in the sky idealist, quite the opposite really.
That being said, in answer to your question, How would my life be worse if our government froze BP's assets?
Freezing BP's assets would make it more likely that many of the people who've already frozen and seized my assets would be allowed to remain in a position to do so again to myself and others.
Somewhat quick story:
I'm not the most tactful, personable or intelligent individual - I know, right?
Having had very lucrative IT work for years, I figuratively shat my own bed work-wise and got backed into a corner. If I was going to continue in IT I'd have to travel. All well and fine except for two young kids and a demonstrably nasty ex who hauled me into court every year to have support for the kids "adjusted". So I pissed away a great IT job, my bad.
Meanwhile... the IRS and I were of differing opinions on "my fair share".
Between seemingly supporting everybody but myself with legal, accounting and other penalties/fees plus interest that brought the situation to a losing tie, funds were sliding and oh by the way, the ex who routinely had "the kids" (who incidentally I took care of most of the time - go figure) cut upped non stop didn't have any interest in reviewing finances once the tide turned.
Settlement.
After many freezes and seizures.
Fast forward to the new wife and I with plenty of real estate investment. We purchased historical homes, renovated them and put grown kids in them for among other reasons, school.
Would you like to discuss the part our government has played in real estate? Short story, remember? Throw in this little tidbit: the IRS has flat not acknowledged processing our 2006 return which incidentally had them owing us quite a bit of money. Any ideal how that can snowball? Now couple real estate with the date 2006. The situation is so bad that the IRS itself has put us into the Tax Payer advocacy program - second time by the way - and has sought arbitration and settlement.
Now I'm not sure how much you know about local, state and federal tax services but they're about like being married to the ex: Anything you do wrong is your fault. Anything they do wrong is your fault. That all flows out to others. I've got people who bought boards from me for years that won't talk to me now over a couple orders that I'm still trying to make right after having everything - bank accounts, homes, etc.. literally taken from us.
We're anything but rich but both the wife and I are very well educated in academic and pragmatic disciplines. Court, show investigations, public castigation, account freezes, asset seizures.....
If this crap is happening to people on our level, then the situation is much worse than American Idol would indicate.
And so being someone incredibly fortunate who's just barely able to continue to live near the ocean while he rebuilds his life and home (replaced the washing machine last night which ate out the solar panel budget for another month - washing clothes by hand sucks) just in time for stupid shit like this to go down, I'm all about trying to make my family, friends, community and self whole in the right way every day.
You asked.
Off to build boards.
Later.
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I have been through what you are going through. Complete with ex and Irs. I had a different outcome. I was able to get along with my ex and it only cost me minimal and I dealt with the IRS by paying them what I owed them or they said I owed them..though I did live at close to poverty for a few years. You don't win very often fighting that lot. Freezing BP's assets have nothing to do with what you are talking about. That is just how our government is. Believe me, I'll fight to keep them out of areas they don't need to be in, but big business is not going to self police and needs to be held to account just like any of the rest of us would. 21 years with the same gal today. 16 years married to her and both of us get along with my ex. It sucks that stuff like happens to you has to happen, but I think they flip a coin or something. I'm all for getting rid of the IRS all together. I don't believe in income based tax.
I run a couple of businesses. My main one is dealing with big business and small business owners. I know them very well. Been doing it over 20 years. Been a company rep for an insurance company. I know how that lot think. They will try and escape their resposibility if they can and they have the assets to keep this type of thing in court for years short of our government forcing their hand. I might feel differently if this were not such a terrible environmental disaster that is going to affect millions perminently very shortly. Not to mention the wildlife that is going to die.
Sorry...I'm not going to lose much sleep over BP's assets. They have had it easy for years. Time to pay the piper.
No offense – and I agree with you on the anger – but there’s a huge BUT to the measure suggested here. HUGE. Chavez huge. Pinochet huge. Castro huge. Know what I’m sayin’?
And I surf the GMX.
(Louisiana’s economy is like 75% oil/gas.)
This fuck up is so immense it's going to take HUGE measures to repair.
There is also a legal basis underlying a call for seizure.
Under deeply-rooted and long standing legal principles, BP should be responsible for all consequence of damage, not merely direct oil removal costs.
The doctrine of strict liability for ultrahazardous or inherently dangerous activities has deep roots within the law. See e.g., Rylands v. Fletcher, 3 H.L. 330 (1868) (landmark English tort law case applying the doctrine of strict liability for inherently dangerous activities in a case where an engineer constructed a reservoir on land to supply power to his steam-powered textile mill, the tanks collapsed and caused others’ property to become flooded).
Much as a keeper of a wild animal is held strictly liable for any damage the animal causes, regardless of fault, the doctrine of strict liability has been applied to industrial hazards, including drilling for oil. See, e.g., Green v. General Petroleum Corp., 205 Cal. 328 (1928) (case imposing strict liability, without showing of fault, upon oil drilling company that experienced well “blow-out” that spewed a steady stream of oil, gas, mud and rocks into the air for 24 hours, causing substantial damage).
Strict liability for ultrahazardous activities has been imposed, for example, on companies engaged in the transportation of toxic chemicals, activities involving poisonous gases, involving hazardous wastes, fireworks displays, deployment of rockets, etc.
Standing in the way of the imposition of strict liability is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. 33 U.S.C. §2701, et seq. Enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill, OPA was created by industry-friendly lawmakers so that it would immunize oil drilling corporations for the economic damages from catastrophic accidents or spills.
Under the OPA, an offshore oil drilling corporation that creates an environmental catastrophe is responsible only for direct removal costs of the spillage, and is immunized from liability for all other economic damages in excess of $75 million. 33 U.S.C. §2704(a)(1)(3).
They pay $75 million and get to walk away free. That’s a great deal for the oil companies, but it’s bad for our communities, it’s bad for the environment, and it makes the future even more perilous because they can pay a pittance and do it again.
Do it again is exactly what Big Oil will do. They are profit maximizers, and the OPA allows them to drill their oil, reap their profits and shift their damages onto the people. Economists call this “cost externalization,” and it is completely opposite to what is required by the doctrine of strict liability.
“Offshore oil producers such as ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. are pressing ahead with drilling even as BP Plc struggles to contain a Gulf of Mexico spill that may costs $12.5 billion to clean up. The Gulf remains attractive to explorers because deep-water discoveries there have averaged almost four times the global average during the past decade, Frank J. Patterson, Anadarko’s vice president for international development, said yesterday at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.” Joe Carroll, Oil Explorers Drill On, Unfazed by BP’s Gulf of Mexico Spill, May 4, 2010. (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-04/oil-explorers-drill-on-unfazed-by-bp-s-gulf-of-mexico-spill.html )
The OPA’s limits of liability provision should be retroactively repealed.
There must be remediation and compensation for all damages flowing from BP’s oil spill, including all losses to people, economy and otherwise. It should not be up to BP to decide if and when to dole out compensation.
BP reaped $5.6 billion of profits in the first quarter of 2010 and $17 billion in 2009. This is money made from BP’s aggressive push into ultra-hazardous deep water offshore drilling that has taken the lives of 11 workers in the recent explosion, and caused human misery and environmental wreckage that will persist for years to come.
These huge sums are pure profit—what remains after all accounting maneuvers and payments of the massive salaries and luxurious perks to executives.
I think people need to step back, relax, take a deep breath and think things thru. Decisions based on hysteria are never good. Yes this is bad in the short term but step back and look at the grander scheme of things. Look at the historical context.
There is no getting around crude oil. We have to have it one way or the other. Nobody is going to take the risk to go get crude oil without the oportunity to make a profit from their risk.
Despite the hysteria that is out there the earth has survived much greater catastrophies even just in the last 100 years. We've all survived. The world has not ended despite countless cateclismic predictions made by people on all sides.
For those who think this is the end of the world go back and do some research on oil spills in the last 100 years. Also go back and research the amount of oil that ended up in the oceans as a result of WWII as the axis powers and allies forces tried to cripple each other's war machines, supply lines and oil production. Based on the predictions in the news on today's spill the north atlantic should still be awash in tar balls still floating around from WWII.
Just don't get caught up in the hysteria. Think things thru logically. Also take everything you see in the news from any source with a grain of salt because none of us here know the real truth because it seems everybody reporting has an agenda of some sort. It seems as though all of the news these days comes from the extremes from both sides.
In a hurry.....gotta go.
Also, to be realistic- let's look at the amount of oil that seeps into the ocean every year NATURALLY:
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=57286&ct=162
Deepwater Horizon is absolutley a disaster, but nature is much better than man at both creating and cleaning up oil leaks- Like I said, this is a disaster, and I am not trying to downplay the leak, but just trying to keep it in perspective and point out that light crude is not a foreign substance in the ocean. Even if man never existed there would be plenty of natural oil spills.
This is an interesting article on the Ixtoc blowout in '79.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011931961_ixtoc23.html
Some of you folks must either work for big oil or you are blind to facts.
Prince William Sound has still not recovered and the fines against Exxon were reduced by billions.
Oil giant ExxonMobil paid the equivalent of 24 hours worth of petroleum sales to the people impacted by the 11 million gallons (41.5 million liters) of crude oil spilled into Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989 when the drunken skipper of the Exxon Valdez allowed the tanker to run aground, according to a U.S. Supreme Court decision. The ruling caps the total damages assessed to the company at $507.5 million, a fraction of the $5 billion a jury initially awarded in 1994.
"This means that corporations like Exxon can simply put a price tag on the destruction of our marine life, our oceans and, ultimately families," says Jim Ayers, Juneau-based vice president at marine environmental group Oceana and the first executive director of the trust set up to manage the recovery and restoration of the sound. "They can estimate the value of that loss, put it into the expense column and roll forward with blatant disregard."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/06alaska.html
http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/05/01/the-exxon-valdez-oil-spill-20-years-after-the-analysis/
The days of our government taking sides with big business at the expense of John Q. Public must end.
Know anything about Halliburton and former VP Cheney's "Energy Task Force"?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html
hhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/about_hal/energytf.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121535&page=1
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/how-dick-cheney-and-tom-delay-caused-gulf-o
You must work for the government since you want them to take over a private business.
Big government is big business, and big business is big government. Businesses don’t get this big without the help of the government (cronyism), and the government doesn’t get this big without their need to “control” big business. It is a circular recursive process.
It is tempting to make blanket generalizations about the degree of corruption in the oil industry as a whole, or wall street, or environmentalists, or government for that matter, but the rush to anger, judgment and punishment of this and that group will sooner or later lead to national suicide. Reform is desperately needed everywhere we look in our society, but reform must be constructive, seeking to rectify, heal and perfect rather than just to punish and to advance the short-sighted interests of the nay sayers.
so far it is being called an accident.we don't yet know all the facts, nor who, if anybody or company is to blame. shit happens. obama says he is overseeing the cleanup, yet i don't see anything he's done to get it done any quicker or better.point is, until it is proven BP should not be held as the only entity responsible.
Washington Post
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/07/AR2010060704826.html
A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the oil company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured employees not to report problems and cut short or delayed inspections to reduce production costs.
Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations -- from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.
When you see it laid out in a graph, its almost hard to comprehend.
The Gulf Oil spill has everyone focused on BP's offshore activity--but onshore, BP's safety record is so bad that it looks like a bunch of typos. Sadly, it's not.
The Gulf Oil spill has everyone focused on BP's offshore activity--but onshore, BP's safety record is so bad that it looks like a bunch of typos. Sadly, it's not.
Between June 2007 and February 2010, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) checked 55 oil refineries operating in the U.S. Two are owned by BP, and those racked up 760 citations for "egregiously willful" safety violations--defined as committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health. The other 53 refineries--put together--only received one such violation.
As you can see, BP accounted for just 4% of the refineries inspected by OSHA. And yet they accounted for 54% of all violations.
What's going on here? According to the Center for Public Integrity, Jordan Barab, the U.S.'s deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said, “The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company."
I think this is going to be the straw that breaks the camels back in regards to using oil. Can you say electric? Will still be a while before oil really loses it’s monopoly status, but I agree on the BP thing. Sue the living shit out of them!
In the meantime, don’t go to BP! Protest with your money!!
A conspiracy in other words. No doubt followed by a conspiracy to cover it up. Though I could be wrong…
Some of you lets not rush to judgement folks gotta check your head!!
Mako224 look at what we are going to be surfing and swimming in.
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/ocean-currents-likely-to-carry-oil-spill-to-atlantic-coast
You eat fish look at what is in COREXIT
http://beforeitsnews.com/news/77/214/Why_Is_BP_Using_Highly_Toxic_Corexit_Oil_Dispersant.html
Salazar should be fired and all off shore drilling should be shut down until the companies that have been bilking you can prove this wont happen else where.
What is the price of gas in your state? In ny $2.90 to $310 per gallon. What has the price of oil per barrel been for the last year? Between $70 and $90 bbl
If that is not a rip off I do not know what is. They are making $ hand over fist.
I am with unclegrumpy
was haliburton at the crime scene? How long before it blew up?
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/44259
number 8, or thereabouts
you guys saying to calm down are missing the boat…
i’m not saying we need to have a knee jerk hotheaded reaction, but this is way worse than it appears.
Firstly the oil on the surface is only part of the problem. There are underwater currents that are taking plumes of oil to different location, and some oceanographers think some of the plumes are 10 MILES in diameter. Add to that they are pumping another super toxic “cleaning agent” into the ocean to make the oil molecules sink, and you are just concoting a seriously fucked up situation.
Oh yeah, the company that makes this cleaning agent is run by a former BP exec and another guy that was head of Exxon Mobile. See where this is going?
see this? this reef set up is in the Loop current that goes from the gulf out into the Gulfstream. Let’s just say that Part of one of these underwater plumes drifts along through the Dry Tortugas, the Florida Keys, and into the Bahamas(not forgetting Cuba and the the other nation in the Gulf) do you really think it will be unaffected?
And yes, we are sadly dependant on the crude oil, but why do you think that is? Or, why do you think that everytime a new remotely possible concept vehicle comes out, it is bought by the oil companies? They already have the technology to create better cars, but oil is still relatively cheap to produce. It is economics over good stewardship.
I personally feel that the people responsible for this should be nailed to the wall. If I dumped oil illegally, I’d be clapped in chains. Just sayin’…
[quote="$1"]
Here is a good link to read.
http://science.jrank.org/pages/4848/Oil-Spills-Oil-pollution.html
[/quote]
Really? What makes it good? Did you happen to notice who paid for that link?
We clean dirty lubricantsOn-site, No Downtime Cost savings up to 75%
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Recovery Still Incomplete After Valdez Spill
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: May 5, 2010
The tanker Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil, staining 1,500 miles of coastline, killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales, and devastating local communities. The spill stopped after just a few days. Recovery may not have an end date.
Fishing here is far from what it was. Suicides and bankruptcies and bitterness surged. Many people left even as a few became “spillionaires,” getting paid to clean up.
A new industry took hold: environmental groups, scientific organizations, experts in the psychological trauma of oil spills. A network of fishermen is now trained and paid by the oil industry to respond if another disaster strikes.
Lawyers, fishermen and environmentalists in the gulf are now calling, looking for guidance in areas like how to harness political anger over the spill and the most effective ecological triage. National news crews are chartering planes to nearby islands to see how oil still coats rocks just below the surface all these years later.
Fishermen recount once again their complicated journeys from the spill to the payments they received just last year from a punitive damages judgment of about $500 million against Exxon in 1994.
People here say they want to move on.
“You’ve got one jaded group of people in this town,” Sylvia Lange, who worked her first fishing boat at 14 and now runs a hotel overlooking the water. “First it was the 10th anniversary, then the 20th and now this.”
Cordova is a reluctant touchstone, still trying to figure out how to respond to the event that defines it for much of the outside world. This year, officials hope to break ground on an ambitious new museum that will replace the frayed scrapbooks of news clippings that now rest on a table near dugout canoes and tools used for gold mining in a room connected to the local library.
“We don’t even have an exhibit about the spill, and yet it’s the most-asked question we get,” said Cathy Sherman, who runs the current museum and library. “Nobody even wanted to be reminded of it here.”
Ms. Sherman said the new museum, which has secured about $18 million in financing from the state and other sources, will tell the story of the spill through objects, including a piece of the Valdez hull. But it will also try to show “what we learned,” she added.
The lessons continue, even after books and dissertations have been written, documentaries made, songs composed and case studies completed. The mountain views are still stunning but the herring fishery is gone, the king and Dungeness crabs, too. Prawns are coming back, but just barely. The loss of the herring industry over the years since the spill has cost the region about $400 million, said R. J. Kopchak of the Prince William Sound Science Center, although some blame cyclical patterns or other factors for the change, not the spill.
Much of a generation chose paths other than fishing, though some younger people have decided to take their chances.
Makena O’Toole, 24, said his earliest memory from childhood was of the paralyzing moment his father, a fisherman, heard that the Valdez tanker had crashed into Bligh Reef. Now, even with the famed Copper River sockeye that spawn here, Mr. O’Toole said, “This is still not a place to be a fisherman.”
Mr. O’Toole said he plans to move south in September, to fish out of Sitka, where he said the fishery was more abundant “because there wasn’t an oil spill there.”
In December, Exxon sent the last of a nearly $500,000 payment to John Platt, but Mr. Platt said he never saw it. Straight to the state and the bank it went, to clear the liens on his boats and his fishing permits, to dig out of the debt he accumulated, some through his own admitted missteps, in the two decades since the wreck of the Valdez.
The payments were initially supposed to be much higher, before Exxon successfully fought, all the way to the Supreme Court, to have them reduced.
“The money was supposed to bring closure,” Mr. Platt said. “Deep down inside I was really banking on it, but it didn’t happen.”
Most people received far less money than Mr. Platt and other fishermen who were able to document strong catches in the years before the spill. Others opted out of the sprawling class-action suit.
Ms. Lange said her family dropped out of the suit and moved to western Alaska to work in the fishing industry there for several years after the spill.
“We made the conscious decision that we were no longer going to be victims,” she said. “I could see my whole life going into the spill.”
Empathy is high here for those closest to the spill in the gulf. Perhaps economic disaster still can be averted, some say. Maybe the fact that the Gulf Coast is so much more accessible than Prince William Sound will help. Maybe its economies will prove diverse enough to handle whatever hit comes. Maybe the warmer water will help disperse the oil. Maybe the fact that, unlike here, the oil spilling in the gulf is being emulsified somewhat as it rises from 5,000 feet below.
But most people here said they thought that at least some communities in the gulf would begin a painful journey with no clear conclusion.
Two years ago, Mike Webber, a fisherman here who also does native carvings, unveiled a “shame pole” he had made to protest Exxon’s actions during and after the spill. The pole depicted dead eagles, herring with lesions, the head of an Exxon executive, upside down.
Now, Mr. Webber said, “People keep telling me to do a healing pole, but I can’t come up with any characters for it.”