The Oil Spill Thread

[mk 11]

In actual capitalism (as opposed to crony capitalism)

and that's the problem with all libertarian economic ideals, isn't it? the gap between your utopian vision and reality tends to be: quite large.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

In actual capitalism (as opposed to crony capitalism), the company and their insurance companies would be liable for ALL damages, and you can bet they would be acting like it mattered a bit more than they are now.

So, would the dead fish be the ones suing BP to collect on the damages, or would it be the oil soaked birds?

[strategy 4]

and that's the problem with all libertarian economic ideals, isn't it? the gap between your utopian vision and reality tends to be: quite large.

how hard would it be to uncap liability, make it so BP could be sued by anyone for any amount? don't you want that anyway?I'm on board with your premise, just skeptical that this is a good example.also: in the words of sal paradise, "I wish I were a crony."

[JoeyJoJo 18]

also: in the words of sal paradise, "I wish I were a crony."

Come on now.Also, let's not all pretend like it wouldn't be the dolphins to sue first.

[FCP Bob 1,321]

Come on now.Also, let's not all pretend like it wouldn't be the dolphins to sue first.

[El Guapo 8]

Why don't we eat dolphin? Is it gross, has anyone tried it?

[LongLiveYorke 38]

Why don't we eat dolphin? Is it gross, has anyone tried it?

Because they're too smart.The real question is, "Why do we eat pigs?"

[JoeyJoJo 18]

Bacon tastes gooood.Pork chops taste gooood.

[strategy 4]

Joey, why did you quote my post and say "Come on now?"

[JoeyJoJo 18]

Joey, why did you quote my post and say "Come on now?"

Come on now = fixed your post.

[strategy 4]

Come on now = fixed your post.

what did you fix?

[Pot Odds RAC 23]

how hard would it be to uncap liability, make it so BP could be sued by anyone for any amount? don't you want that anyway?I'm on board with your premise, just skeptical that this is a good example.also: in the words of sal paradise, "I wish I were a crony."

When the Valdez spill happened a jury hit Exxon for $287 million in Clean up and $5 Billion in punitive damages a full year of Exxon's profits at the time The $5 billion was appealed to $2.5 Billion......and so on until in 2008 the SCOTUS ultimately vacated the $2.5 Billion.And uncapping liability for a given event isn't likely to withstand legal appeals unless some REAL malicious intent on BP's part can be proven. I mean, it was capped to prevent the liability from being uncapped - that is sort of the point of the cap in the first place.

[JoeyJoJo 18]

what did you fix?

Oh. Heh.

[strategy 4]

When the Valdez spill happened a jury hit Exxon for $287 million in Clean up and $5 Billion in punitive damages a full year of Exxon's profits at the time The $5 billion was appealed to $2.5 Billion......and so on until in 2008 the SCOTUS ultimately vacated the $2.5 Billion.And uncapping liability for a given event isn't likely to withstand legal appeals unless some REAL malicious intent on BP's part can be proven. I mean, it was capped to prevent the liability from being uncapped - that is sort of the point of the cap in the first place.

I don't even... wait...I'm gonna have to call my lawyer before continuing this conversation.

[hblask 1]

and that's the problem with all libertarian economic ideals, isn't it? the gap between your utopian vision and reality tends to be: quite large.

I see this complaint a lot, and it seems a bit silly. Crony capitalism doesn't work under the best of circumstances; socialism doesn't work under the best of circumstances; the only system that has shown any ability to work over any time period is free markets and rule of law. Everything else is a distant second. So I don't see how saying that socialists and crony capitalists corrupt the one system that works is any kind of indictment of the one system that works. What is the alternative? To just give up and turn the system over to parasites and criminals?

[hblask 1]

So, would the dead fish be the ones suing BP to collect on the damages, or would it be the oil soaked birds?

It would be the people whose business have been harmed -- the shrimp and fishing industries, and tourism.If you wanted to go to a full free market system with property rights, someone would own a negotiated right to catch X amount of fish in area Y. That would have a clear market value, based on previous transactions, and anyone who damages that property would be liable for reparations.

[SCYUKON 0]

Why is no one trying out the Canadian solution?http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-447732Must be some anti-Canadian bias or something

[Balloon guy 158]

Story on the news said when Obama went to survey the coast, BP had a crew of workers brought in just before he got there to 'look busy'Soon as he left, they left.I guess Obama bought it...

[Balloon guy 158]

Why is no one trying out the Canadian solution?http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-447732Must be some anti-Canadian bias or something

How much gelco 200 would it take to sprinkle it over an area the size of 29,000 square miles?I'm guessing a lot. Probably more than there exists.this is an infomercial from another foreign company trying to suck up our tax dollars.

[Balloon guy 158]

A good article by Peggy Noonan

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—"catastrophe," etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, "I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite." But his strategic problem was that he'd already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him. When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way. In any case, the strategy was always a little mad. Americans would never think an international petroleum company based in London would worry as much about American shores and wildlife as, say, Americans would. They were never going to blame only BP, or trust it.I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush's incompetence and conservatives' failure to "believe in government." But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.Remarkable too is the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you're drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We're plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president's Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration, and that is no cause for joy. It's not good to have a president in this position—weakened, polarizing and lacking broad public support—less than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world, or its safety, that the leader of "the indispensable nation" be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen.Mr. Obama himself, when running for president, made much of Bush administration distraction and detachment during Katrina. Now the Republican Party will, understandably, go to town on Mr. Obama's having gone before this week only once to the gulf, and the fund-raiser in San Francisco that seemed to take precedence, and the EPA chief who decided to cancel a New York fund-raiser only after the press reported that she planned to attend.But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: When you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

[Balloon guy 158]

A couple of quotes from then campaigning Obama:

OBAMA: It's time for America to rebuild trust with the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. When I am president, I will start by restoring that most basic trust: That your government will do what it takes to keep you safe. The words "never again" spoken sooo often in those weeks after Katrina must not fade to a whisper.

OBAMA: We can talk about a trust that was broken -- the promise that our government will be prepared, will protect us, and will respond in a catastrophe

Obama: I promise I will not rest until this oil leak is fixed, as soon as I get my handicap down to at least an 18 of course..

One of those is mine...for him.

[checkymcfold 0]

this whole situation is so ****ed. politics aside, i just saw an interview with a geologist who said that after the failed attempt today, we basically have the big/nuclear bomb option (risky for reasons already mentioned) or have to invent something new to try, or else we could be looking at THREE YEARS of this until the well starts to dry up. gg east coast if that happens, jesus.as to the obama criticism, the only real question worth asking is "could he be doing something he isn't doing already?" and outside of some sort of empty feely speech, i think that the answer is a pretty clear "nothing." bp, on the other hand, as well as the regulatory agencies, christ. if we don't start criminally prosecuting negligence (if there is any, which i'd say at this stage is likely) in these sorts of situations, i'll go ballistic. i also have no idea why the media isn't spending like 90% of all air time interviewing scientists (or pastors, BG) from like every university in north america until this shit gets plugged up. there will be plenty of time to figure out who to blame later.

[AmScray 355]

When the Valdez spill happened a jury hit Exxon for $287 million in Clean up and $5 Billion in punitive damages a full year of Exxon's profits at the time The $5 billion was appealed to $2.5 Billion......and so on until in 2008 the SCOTUS ultimately vacated the $2.5 Billion.And uncapping liability for a given event isn't likely to withstand legal appeals unless some REAL malicious intent on BP's part can be proven. I mean, it was capped to prevent the liability from being uncapped - that is sort of the point of the cap in the first place.

THe difference being that the Exxon cases were operating under entirely different legal dicta. A few selectively changed laws and a few new laws, entirely new ballgame.I want these ****ers to pay *dearly*. All the facts aren't in yet and it's yet to be seen how the story ends, but this could be our Chernobyl or Bhopal. If any sort of willful negligence can be demonstrated that contributed to this, I want decision makers going to prison and the company held liable for every single drop of oil, wherever it ends up and if that means 'corporate profits' for the next decade go towards undoing this, then so be it.

[hblask 1]

It looks like, at this point, making BP pay for all of this is impossible. Unless the well is capped immediately (and maybe even then), the damage from this will exceed all the profits of ten companies their size. BP will not exist if they have to pay for this. I'm fine with that, but it doesn't help all the people who are harmed. There will probably be a massive new tax on oil companies, which will be passed on to us in higher gas prices. So as usual, we'll all pay for it.

[strategy 4]

It looks like, at this point, making BP pay for all of this is impossible. Unless the well is capped immediately (and maybe even then), the damage from this will exceed all the profits of ten companies their size. BP will not exist if they have to pay for this. I'm fine with that, but it doesn't help all the people who are harmed. There will probably be a massive new tax on oil companies, which will be passed on to us in higher gas prices. So as usual, we'll all pay for it.

supposedly BP has spent about a billion so farhttp://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:BP&fstype=iithey reported $6 billion income last quarter, had $12.2 billion in cash/cash equivs, $35 billion long-term investments. I'm guessing they could probably eat up to $20 billion in clean-up charges today and still be a healthy company. we could probably get somewhere north of $60 billion out of them if we decided BP as a company should no longer exist.