Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 08, 2010

Amorality means never having to be selective.

splash

Those pelicans were greasing themselves up to swim up the Mississippi and attack the St. Louis Gateway Arch. They’re clearly part of Al Qaida.

Duke’s the only one who might take BP as a client now!

What if all those damned oily birds fly north for the summer just to get away from the Gulf. Then what? At least we can say we are doing something about the bird flu problem. Spin, we need spin. Slippery slopes?? no, wrong Black Sea, already been used. Invasion of Cuba?? Maybe? Lets see how the winds blow

“Alright, people. No more smoking around the birds!”

http://shockdom.com/open/carl/2010/06/08/striscia-20/

You can make book on any event–not only sports, but elections, for example. Real Clear Politics showed the changing odds (“trades”) for bets on Obama vs. McCain.

BP claimed yesterday to be “self-insured.” Sounds just like AIG’s claims before its derivatives obligations were exposed. Duke may be selling BP a credit default swap. Whatever his scheme, you can “bet” (literally–online) that the real stakeholder will be US.

BP said that they have paid out over $40 million in compensation so far. They didn’t say which members of their board of directors has received it.

Hmm, Duke isn’t smoking. I wonder why?

Larry, these things tend to move in circles, so I imagine that it’s the same ones that donated to Obama’s presidential campaign.

Despite the broadcasted static for public consumption, the relationship between BP and the White House has looked awfully cozy since day one. Our president has his own communications strategy down pat - remember him publicly chastizing Wall Street bonuses at the same time that the White House sent errand-boy Dodd to insert those bonuses into the stimulus bill as payback for his election support? As Yogi Bera might say, it’s deja vu all over again.

Being “self-insured” means not being insured at all. Corporate assetts underwrite potential liabilities, which in most cases makes more sense than having a third party do it,. However, if the “BP Boycott” is successful, one day there may not be any assetts to pay all the claims against them. Be careful what you wish for…

Nem: they have limited liability. You’re repub friends already made that a law. So your poor little massive oil co. is safe after all!

Doesn’t GT know that BP already had this conversation with Fox and friends?

“Meltdown” is a good analogy.

This is America’s Chernobyl – an accident that wasn’t supposed to happen, with more devastating consequences than anyone anticipated, that no one knows quite how to fix…or keep from happening again.

The statutory liability for an oil company operating in the U.S. is a mere $75 million. BP has already said it will indemnify claimants for more than that.

The question is how much more. As Nemesys says, no company can pay out more than it’s worth (before its stock fell, the market was capitalizing BP at about $80 billion).

That’s the beauty of capitalism: bankruptcy erases all other liabilities along with your capital.

This immoral guarantee allows capitalist shareholders in a L(imited) L(iability) C(ompany) like BP to escape paying for their rape of the environment, to say nothing of the loss of life they’ve caused. Justice is limited to putting them out of existence.

@Nemesys: Well, Obama told Matt Lauer yesterday he wanted to figure out whose “ass to kick.”

jhouch, then maybe he should kick all of ours. We’re addicted to cheap oil to the point where BP and their competition look at expensive and dangerous deep-sea drilling as a very profitable investment. While they’re the dealers, we’re the stoners, and without us the pushers go out of business… not unlike the situation on the Arizona border. As palin drome says, capitalism is a wonderful thing.

This oil spill is somewhat of an intervention. It’s a tragedy, but an opportunity at the same time. We’re in the right place to make a serious investment away from oil dependence.. even the anti-nukers can’t argue against the environmental risks under the present system..

Will we take it? Naw, we’ll just start acting emotional against BP with our boot off their neck just long enough to kick their ass. It’s like a WWE match… the outcome is picked in advance, but it’s wonderful show business.

Re BP’s liability, and the $75M limit: note that there’s a loophole in the law–if there was criminal conduct, negligence, etc., the limit doesn’t apply. This may be why the AG is now looking so closely at BP (and perhaps why BP was so quick to say it would pay whatever the cleanup cost).

As for BP’s future, one of the NYT financial columnists reported yesterday on how the company’s starting to look like a takeover target–especially if the acquiring company (most likely Shell or Exxon/Mobil) can engineer a way to pack all the liability for this spill into a subsidiary which they then spin off (under-capitalized, of course).

Sounds like it’s time to “Nationalize” the Oil Industry. If BP manages to weasel out of paying for the cleanup ($75 million is a joke), then buy them out . Use this revenue source to reduce taxes & clean up this mess!

Nationalize the Oil industry. Whew! Lets go for the phone companies, electric companies, and radio and TV broadcasters. I’ll feel safe when Washington controls them too. Public education should be mandatory, no more pesky private universities. G.J. JEHOSAPHAT could you fly your colors more clearly? You know, the newspapers are printing some pretty subversive things too. And the Internet?What we need is loving government control.

@GJ_Jehosaphat: Robert Reich has called for the government to place BP in receivership in order to take control of their assets, which he says is allowable in this situation. The government would then be in a position to make sure that the cleanup efforts reflect the public interest over the shareholders’ interest.

I think he has a good point. Could there have been ideas to stop the leak sooner that BP rejected because they would have prevented them from tapping back into the well later?

LOL - Lew! No need to go hog wild with Nationalizing Communications - they’re available low cost to the public and don’t leave a toxic residue.

Edit: ☝Well, most of the time (with the exceptions of Limbaugh & Beck)

BTW - didn’t U like the Reduction of Taxes! That should make some of the Fiscal Conservatives Happy☺☺☺

Lest we not forget, our president has reminded us to ” Make no mistake BP is operating at our direction…The United States government has always been in charge making sure the response has been appropriate.”

So it sounds to me that if good ideas have been ignored and this project has been business as usual, then it’s been at our administration’s direction and not BP’s.

Nationalize the oil companies? Great idea! With the government having stakes in oil revenues, you’ll see their GM-run subsidiary revert to 8 MPG Hummers pushed as the new “socially-responsible” vehicle of choice.

In fact, how about that our government take over this comic strip? Wait a minute - they already have!

No, not nationalize. What we HAVE to do is get off this BIG OIL standard, quit making the Arab world (their governments, of course) obscenely rich, quit doing everything in our power to keep driving our cars wherever and whenever we want. And no, I have absolutely no more idea how to go about that than anyone else who’s been preaching that for years. No, solar and wind won’t take care of us for many, many years, if ever - I know I’ll be long gone. Being retired, though, I still fill up my vehicle and go traveling, go fishing, hit the Nevada casinos for a few nights every month, and then write comments on GoComics about how we need to change that…sound familiar? If you want, blame communist Russia and Eisenhower - younger people won’t remember the narrow two-lane highways that went through the center of every small town on the way. Then the Cold War - Ike needed “Super Highways” for the military and had them built, so now we can (and have been, for years) zip around and around, and never ever be out of range of a gas station. Gas companies may be greedy, but “they” are NOT stupid. We’re hooked and the addiction is too strong to break. OK, my rant is done - move along, folks…

I can’t wait until they start applying the new technology to nuclear plants – then it won’t just be the birds and fish that are dying (for a change).

Capitalism tends to be mean and selfish. Sometimes it seems it isn’t worth its downsides, but it is the only system that makes risk-taking and innovation reckon its costs – even if the bad companies manage to avoid said costs and make others pay them. It’s up to government to regulate the risk taking by capitalists so we get necessary innovation without obscene costs, while resisting the temptation for government to take over everything, do the risk-taking, and hide the costs. Goldman-Sachs, BP, and others have really screwed us. Who can we trust to regulate the bastards?

Not republicans.

I have two words on the idea of nationalizing oil:

Ixtoc One.

Let me add something to that…

Cost incentive is pretty powerful on the private sector, but not so on governments. If a private operation blows up, literally or figuratively, it’s lost source(s) of income and has new expenses to deal with. If a public enterprise explodes, the government simply raises taxes, or prints money, or borrows money.

Chernobyl was also a public-sector operation…