It's always frustrating, to me anyway, when people (and in this case corporations) feel like they can act shamefully and recklessly and remain free of any and all consequences. They downplay and minimize the extent of the damage they do because they aren't accountable--they refuse to be. And people let them get away with it. And wonder why those of us who speak out and try to do something to say ENOUGH pick on them.

Once, a very honest man said, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

That man was Abraham Lincoln, who allowed the corporations to become permanent so that he could get a railroad built. That decision won the civil war. He knew what he was doing and he did it to uphold an oath to protect the union - an oath he knew he shouldn't uphold, but had to because he took it. The problem with true honesty is it sometimes gets you into the worst kind of bind.

This article is brilliantly written, and It's nice to hear your point of view, for you are a realist, and a deep thinker. This issue has roots like the tree far wider than we would like to know. We need to refocus and quick because we're all going to be dirty with that oil sooner than later. Green energy is needed now as well. Money is the roots of all evil and discourse. Never mind negativity, Cheers on the great discussion point. Kristin S.

I have a hypothesis. Neocons who come on here, if they ever touched a paper about Taft, Buckley, certain Buchanan papers, would so realize the errors of their ways they would go on any street corner proclaiming the amorality of the current Republican Party.

Unfortunately, the reality is Taft would be accused of being a Radical Socialist who was born in Kenya and supports illegal immigrants more then U.S. citizens.

Do you have more optimism?

Bravo! You speak for many.

My thinking in terms of movies may be out of place here but this reminds me of the Fight Club "car recall principle":
"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
If they can afford it corporations do whatever they want and almost never have to face consequences.

Putting on my tinfoil, I'd say that BP is helping America and Europe gear up for a possible war with Iran, and the pell-mell race to prepare any and all sources of crude oil outside the Middle East led to the haste you see result in disaster on the Deepwater Horizon. Remember, the rig was in the process of capping the well temporarily.

And that's why you see the reluctance to put teeth behind the rhetoric about BP.

Taking off the tinfoil -- if the US pushed BP over the cliff, the consequences to the slowly mending global economy would be staggering.

Well done, Roger. Think about this: Richard
Nixon enacted wage and price controls and moved to develop a dialogue with China. I submit he could not be nominated within today's Republican party. And, this is the party that has members ho defend BP by saying that expecting BP to set aside $20B for a restitution fund is extortion. And, "Drill, baby, drill". I am disappointed in the tepid response of the Obama administration to the spill as well as the banking collapse. It is strongly suggestive that this administration is only slightly less beholden to corporations. Dark times, indeed.

It's difficult to comprehend how corporations such as BP can be so negligent and yet not be held accountable. And of course, as you say, it's not just BP, but many corporations in general. Just last night, I watched the film Food, Inc. for the first time, and the one thing that stood out to me, from that film (even more than the disturbing methods used for processing food), was the greed and just outright evilness of corporations such as the Monsanto Company. And like BP, they're not held accountable. Corporations like these are amongst the worst criminals on the planet, and yet people (politicians and pundits in particular) decide to protect them. Have these people lost the ability to decipher what is right and what is wrong in these situations? Or are they immoral, greedy, narcissistic pricks who only look out for their own best short-term interest? I'm sure it's both.

Hizzoner, the original Mayor Richard J. Daley, used to always ask, "Where are da trees you planted?" Mr. Ebert, I think you just planted a few trees, in the way the good Mayor had in mind.

Doesn't matter what stripe of politics you subscribe to, they all kowtow to the big money... No one cares about the little people...

If people mattered, then the politicians would have ENFORCED the safety standards and procedures already in place to begin with and we would not be living through this. If people mattered, those responsible for the Deepwater Horizion would have made it top priority that all safety measures were in place and those 11 people lost would be here today. (http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/deepwater_horizon_safety_alert.html)

But, we all know it's not about people. It's about the bottom dollar, booze, drugs and sex. People are just expendable.

"How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?"

They do it like this: LOOK OVER THERE, SOME GAY GUYS GETTING MARRIED, ISN'T THAT GROSS?!?

Hi Roger,

Excellent Journal entry. Hitting right on the national nerve.

No, we are not in agreement. We were for a couple of paragraphs which recounted the event. I might add the role of the MMS under both recent administrations. Quibbling, though.

You lost me in paragraph 9, when it became a standard partisan left rip on Republicans and Fox News. The echo chamber will be cheering, of course.

They of course, being all bad. Obama and company all good, with the mild blandishment about being "curiously passive". Nice way of saying that it was 70 days or so, with a clock ticking in everyone's minds, before Team Obama seemed to have any skin in the game other than a couple of three hour photo-op trips.

It's a selective and partisan take, yet all will accuse Fox News of being the partisans. Night after night O'Reilly was on saying it was not Obama's fault, yet the left will continue to say FNC is rabid right-wing. It's ridiculous.

Some thoughts:

Fox News and its fellow travelers took issue with environmentalists and Greens.

Yeah. But not for the reasons that you mention. Conservatives, lead by Sarah Palin, point out that the reason that we are engaged in very risky drilling deep deep out in the gulf drilling a mile deep is that the "Greens" pushed us out there. We would rather be drilling close to shore or on ANWR with safer technology. Where we could get to it and stop it in less than 90 days if there is an accident. That is an entirely sensible argument, and it is entirely misportrayed by the left in America - while at the same time they decry partisan politics. Tell that story right! (Sorry, that one gets me angry.)

Measures against the company were opposed.

Not for the reasons that you are implying.

No one has any love for BP, or desire to protect them from responsibility or accountability. All blame BP.

But, there is the rule of law. We to do it right, and not foolishly. If they go immediately bankrupt, how do they pay for the damage? That's what makes people cautious.

I think there are a lot more Americans who think he is socialist than there are Americans who know what a socialist is.

That's an elitist statement. Not thinking very kindly of your neighbors. Neighbors who value the rule of law and the limits on our branches of government. Neighbors who understand that if our President is powerful enough to demand money from the bad guy without the courts acting, then he is powerful enough to demand it from you, eventually.

for the politicians in league with those executives.

I'm sorry. Which presidential campaign was it again that got the most donations from BP?

You left that out, because you don't get to bash Republicans and Fox News with it.

Last point:

Corporations know no patriotism. They are multi-national. They deal with all markets. It is hard to say just where a big corporation is actually centered.

True. And you are way behind Pat Buchanan in making that point. Pat's been making it effectively at least since his presidential run, and his excellent book "The Great Betrayal" in the 90's. He regularly warns against the rise of the transnationalist companies. Pat sent letters to all of the large companies, like Boeing, asking them to certify that they were American companies. They refused.

Corporations are now global. But, they are also accountable through our laws for damage that they do. And no one wants less than that. Republican or Democrat.

Are we in agreement on that? :)

I wish I could tell you things could change, but I'm beginning to think we've painted ourselves into the corner on the long side of the room.

So many mistakes: granting corporations citizens rights - even though, as you point out, they have no national loyalty; a political system so dependent on corporate wealth, that there is little hope a true and independent "voice of the people" could ever stand a chance; a media system co-opted by the same corporations to the point of subservience; a body politic carved into two incompatible halves - arguing minutiae with a fanaticism bordering on religious zeal; religions themselves selling their souls for a seat at the money changer's table; and an education system designed to keep people ignorant of fact, but well versed in advertising lingo and pop culture.

And that's before we stop to consider the question of economics, both personal and national. We've long been writing bad checks for a lifestyle we cannot afford. At first it was personal things - a big screen TV here, a new car there - but thanks to a media focused collective conditioning, it has expanded to become a part of our very being. If a government won't make an effort to balance its books, what kind of message does that send to the people? Why should we try, if they won't? Why can't we live in the same delusion, or at least try to perpetuate it? Push the problem just a wee bit further down the road?

Deep problems require deep answers, and for the past few generations we've made a conscious effort to dumb the populace down to point of total inertia. "Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror," we've said, "Trust him, for he only has your best interest at heart." Now we know that is patently no longer the case, and we are realizing that what the man was doing behind the curtain was cementing his position - digging in for the long siege.

We know we're in bad shape, but God, where do we even begin? Where do we draw that line in the sand so that we may bellow "This ends now!"?

The sad truth is that corporations, by their own nature, do not adhere to morals or ethics – they go after what everyone wants and needs. And in BP's case, it's one of the driving economic forces in the world: oil.

Oil is money, people want money – and lots of it. Attaching a sense of morale to money is infringing, inefficient, insubstantial to the industrialist ideals of Adam Smith; without morality, we can consume and consume to satiate our greedy pleasures, our selfish needs in the immediacy of desire. Capitalism satisfies this – in fact, it caters to this mentality. And corporations relish off this.

Society's values have changed. We've let ourselves gorge on satisfaction, so much that Aldous Huxley would roll in his grave if he saw how right he was about human nature; that in losing a sense of humanity we become hapless consumeristic babies, never looking farther ahead than the want to have it our way, right now.

I'm horrified by how many of my peers don't take a second to think about what they're buying and, by extension, supporting: that in shopping at Wal-Mart for the cheapest price they support a corporation that disallows labor unions; that in buying clothes from outlets like H&M and Gap you increase the probability of sweatshops and child labor in developing countries to take place; that by traveling to Dubai and living in luxury you support the 2% elite wealth and parade your good fortune in lieu of the 98% impoverished; and that buying computers like HP you reinforce the companies incentive to outsource computer support to countries like India.

Maybe they just don't know, but if they did it's likely they just don't care enough to change. And it's this same mentality, this "it's affecting me right now" attitude is what drives capitalism and corporations to act the way they do, so when they actually make a mistake that has immediate consequences, they act like children trying to cover it up so mommy won't see how badly they wet the bed.

Problem is we have no overseeing accountability – at least not one that can strike us humans down immediately (religious advocates argue in the spiritual realm, but I am speaking specifically of non-omnipresent entities that we are able to perceive as humans). Without such accountability, this selfish nature becomes an axiom because quite bluntly, the world's economic and political structures are also composed (but not exclusively) of childish satiation desires devoid of morality or ethics.

It's a sad, sad situation.

It is a real joy to read such well written words. I think Gene Siskel has both thumbs up after reading this.

Again, thanks for a great summary of the bp oil spill. It makes me angry knowing that some politicians have obviously been bought. Like you said, we all know it, but can't prove it even if some of them make it seem so obvious.

Thank you, Roger. As always, your comments are right to the point. But in this case, you have drilled down to the core of our current crisis. Our republican friends want us to believe that the problem is big government
(i. e. regulations) vs. the people.
The real problem is big business (i. e. corporations) vs. the people.
Government in most instances is our friend inasmuch as it controls the effects of corporations on our lives. It seems that in most cases corporations, as you point out, are willfuly dishonest, corrupt, evil and worship profits above all else.
How many more examples do we need before we realize that corporations do not have our best interests in mind and are not on our side?

Thanks, Roger. This was beautifully written and gets right to the hear of the matter. Sadly, the "tragedy of the commons" is as real as ever.

I have a hypothesis, too, and it's one I've proven with a great deal of sad experience: America's current crop of vacuous liberals and anti-corporate leftists lives in a Never-Never Land of paranoia and conspiracy, showing perfect resistance to any stray fact that might crack their collective delusion. It is useless to tell them, for example, that Wal-Mart does not "set the minimum wage" in the US (even their part-time, entry-level positions pay more than the minimum), that BP and BP shareholders have suffered massive losses of capital since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, that BP is financially responsible for all cleanup costs on the Gulf (one wonders in whose universe would "full responsibility for cleanup costs with possibility of criminal prosecution" constitute "immunity"), or that trust-busting seldom (if ever) has the beneficial effect on the overall economy that they seem to think it does. For all the good it will do, one may as well speak Tamil to most American liberals as explain simple supply-and-demand economics.

I highly recommend "Unequal Protection" by Thom Hartmann, for a history of exactly how corporations came to be so all-powerful, and the steps we need to take to put democracy back in action in this country.

I agree, brilliantly written. Indeed you are a populist. And comprehensible.

Randy, you made a mistake so easy to correct in that post the rest of your remarks fall flat.

"I'm sorry. Which presidential campaign was it again that got the most donations from BP?"

That would be the McCain/Palin campaign getting supported by an organization funded by BP. What Obama/Biden received was donations from BP employees. Not the same. Not even close.

Also:

" Conservatives, lead by Sarah Palin, point out that the reason that we are engaged in very risky drilling deep deep out in the gulf drilling a mile deep is that the "Greens" pushed us out there."

So the Greens forced BP to use shoddy parts, turn off the alarm, and ignore other safety concerns? They have more power than even they realize.

Hi, Roger.

With regard to, "And if my neighbor could prove that I was trying to cut the tree down (for fuel, let's say) and it fell the wrong way, he'd have grounds for a lawsuit."

I say this with equal measures of anger and sadness, but that's unfortuntaely not a good analogy. Remember that we live in a country where individuals do not have the right to live on their own property and their own house if a rich corporation wants your property.

You bought yourself a nice land in a secluded part of the U.S. and found out there's ore there? Tough luck, you don't get to mine it. They'll take your land from eminent domain.

You built up a nice business in a nice part of a big city and own the building? Tough luck, some big corporation gets to take it from you.

We do NOT have rights in this country. Only the rich have rights, and usually only the super rich (the ones who can drop 50 million in a law suit or one million in kick backs or bribes when they want it).

As long as we live in a society where the governors, the senators, the mayors, the president and anyone with power get millions in kick backs and perks from corporations there will never be freedom or justice. You don't even get to keep your house. You only get to keep it if and while no corporation wants it.

And that's why it's a bad analogy. Yes you'd owe your neighbor if you spill a tree in his house. But a corporation can take your house and your land if it wants your tree.

You can't negotiate with cancer.

Randy Masters said:

But not for the reasons that you mention. Conservatives, lead by Sarah Palin, point out that the reason that we are engaged in very risky drilling deep deep out in the gulf drilling a mile deep is that the "Greens" pushed us out there.

I still haven't figured out why it is the fault of environmentalists that BP and others have been allowed to drill in areas for which they don't have the proper safety technology -- or, as it turns out, didn't use the technology they had access to.

And it's certainly debatable whether a shorter leak closer to shore would have done less damage to people's homes and livelihoods.

I'm a Canadian, which means the direct impact on me, though not nil, is less than it is for my neighbours to the south, for whom I feel compassion.

In my view, the root of this issue is that corporations are "person-like" in the eyes of the law in some sense: they can be held legally liable, can be sued, etc. But in other ways, the law passes them by completely: they can't be sent to jail. If they go bankrupt due to negligence or criminal activity, it's entirely possible for them to simply "dissolve". Actions or decisions that would be considered criminal indifference by a person are standard procedure for a major industrial corporation.

To get the right wing on side, you need to frame problems like this as they truly are: a problem of *crime*. We need legal jurisdictions that have the ability to get "tough on crime" in a way that can really make a difference.

The 2nd greastest man-made environmental disaster ever, next to The Last Airbender.

Zing!

"Randy Masters" writes:

> "Conservatives, lead by Sarah Palin, point out that the reason that we are engaged in very risky drilling deep deep out in the gulf drilling a mile deep is that the "Greens" pushed us out there. We would rather be drilling close to shore or on ANWR with safer technology."

LOL. Really, with a straight face, telling us that poor Sarah wouldn't have drilled EVERYWHERE if only "environmentalists" would have given her ANWR drilling?

GOP: Masters of strawmen arguments.

Next, "Randy Masters" will tell us that we only invaded Iraq illegally because Democrats wouldn't let us invade Iran, which is the one they really wanted.

BTW, "Randy Masters" doesn't seem to be aware of the fungible nature of market oil. There is no such thing as "domestic oil". ALL markets are transnational.

And of course, "Randy Masters" can't resist pulling out the "elitist" ad hominem. Because it's somehow elitist to point out that Tea Party advocates profess that Obama is both "socialist" and "fascist", which are dictionary opposites.

Yes, it's elitist to point out that the Tea Party can't have it both ways.

Roger said: "Which economic system is involved is not really the issue, although both sides pretend it is."

Very few people seem to get this very basic fact. It goes like this -- if one is entrusted with criminal law enforcement, ethnicity as a measure of tendency to criminality is a nonsensical and invalid variable, what ought be studied are the motivations of the criminals.

If it is a young black male committing the crime,, he is labeled a crook, thug, and all manner of other derisive pejoratives. The charges have grand names also, such as "grand theft auto" "burglary" etc. Chances are he is greatly impoverished and his crime is likely one of dire need.

If it is a middle aged white male millionaire, or even billionaire, who commits the crime, what are his charges?

"Money laundering"

Convenience store robbers get harsher sentences than those worms who ravage entire communities in the wake of their destructive greed and how are they usually characterised by the so called defenders of morality?

"He was in way over his head." "If it were me, I wouldn't have done it, because y'know, I'm a great guy; I'm a swell gal, we believe in god don't you know."

Why isn't the punishment proportionate to the crime?

Because this frankly loony minority that is the TeePee movement, spearheaded by the cretins on the Murdoch payroll & as you mention, legitimately (or so we like to think) elected officials from the mainstream Republican party, all hang on to this fiction that is known as "The American Dream".

The variations in "The American Dream" can be stark and stupefying. Barack Obama, is the quintessence of what this noble ideal is supposed to represent. You Roger, are what "The American Dream" is all about. It is about overcoming circumstance, being made stronger for it and wanting, I repeat, *wanting* once more, *WANTING* to contribute to make if not the world, then at the very least your own nation a better and more equitable place to live in.

Not these guys. They want to pay the 10% towards charity that their good book recommends and that they conclude would be a just mechanism of executing their duties as good christians.

They might have been off sick when this was being taught in Bible Study Hour or whatever they call it --

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

Luke 6:31 King James Bible

If they were present, it can only be assumed that they are dullards, because by not helping others they do harm unto themselves.

"The American Dream", that fashionable foot-shooting psychosis that these Republicans declare allegiance to, is the hallucination that every Tom, Dick, Harry, can reinvent the lightbulb, or study at Stanford and own some big IT corporation and then where would they be if they had to pay a little bit more tax, with their billions in riches?

I'd like to think that I were imagining this, but these good people really, truly do believe that *every single one of them* has the equal opportunity to get to the top of the corporate ladder, based on nothing else but a prayer and a little elbow grease. There's even some truth to it, they create for themselves false economy in which people like "Joe the plumber" can have his fifteen minutes of fame, for his financial incompetence and not running a registered business at that and manage to make considerable sums of money for it.

But, for the most part, they are delusional and the most shocking fact of all is that they are themselves the ones who pay the highest price for their delirium.

Why do they do it?

Simple and best answer -- people love playing high stakes games.

When WorldCom fell in the 90s, it was because of over-investment in fibre optics, with no viable business model to recoup their invested capital, as a consequence of which we had the dotcom bubble & still no one learnt a single damned thing from it.

An opposition is crucial to the success of a democracy, but what you have in the U.S., at least with the TeePees is a sinister, racist movement with strong fascist overtones. Try as one might, I have found that usually there is no talking sense with them. They're like that guy from that Greek Wedding picture who believed that window cleaner was the solution to all life's problems.

I'll save my BP tirade for another time, when my head isn't at risk of exploding from frustration. Suffice it to say, I think that they ought to be dealt with under the full extent of the law for criminal negligence and proportionately, but, the financial recompense that they are obliged to, ought be taken up a few notches to set a precedent for all other such spineless executives on company boards all over the world.

I've been holding that in for quite some time. I wish I could say that the release feels good, but it doesn't because the scale of the environmental disaster is such that any amount of venting I do will not make me forget it and be lighter for having so done.

Indian Idiot (H.W.)

P.S. Quick afterthought regarding recent spy scandal -- Sarah Palin saw the Russian spies from her house, she was going to "RIP THE LID OFF OF IT!" in articles in all those newspapers she reads..

Don't forget the possibility of the United States fighting a war for BP. You don't think that BP has its meat hooks in Iraq's 115 billion barrel, 9.5 trillion dollar lucrative oil reserves?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303601504575154030706013588.html

Please see my URL and therefore my page, done in early June. I don't disagree with your sentiments, but I fear we're all (RM and other Fox fans excepted) going to nod and say Right On and tomorrow morning get in our gasoline-requiring cars and go to work or play just the way we've always done.

Like some big banks, who launder drug money with impunity, BP seems Too Big To Fail. So rhetoric away, folks, but back up your words with some action: Please plan to not drive so much, and then keep your plan. Support alternatives. It will make a difference.

This is my favorite topic you've tackled in a blog entry! Out of curiosity, have you found any more information related to the supposed bursting of the methane bubble? Everything I have read that has tried to refute it has only really said "It's dumb" without providing much evidence to prove why the theory is dumb. It's a crazy scenario but it's just unique enough and seemingly rooted evidence to at least be worth the curiosity (especially for those of us that live along the Gulf coast).

Ebert: Some claim the danger has been exaggerated. Can't find many who say it doesn't exist.

"It makes me angry knowing that some politicians have obviously been bought."

Like Roger wrote in the post, we all know that the lobbyists from the most influential sectors have, uh, serious input in shaping the laws that affect their industries... what is doubly infuriating is how cheaply those who pass these laws can be bought.

An industry that wanted to bundle campaign contributions (say a couple hundred grand for a Congressman, a million for a Senator) could make a very convincing case to that lawmaker that both their interests align, and easily get a ten-fold or hundred-fold return on their 'investment'. Happens every day.

We see the results, policies thus formed push events like the BP oil spill and the Massey mine disaster from the province of tragedy to that of inevitability.

It'd be nice if this tragedy were to result in a national conversation on, say, the real-world effects of radical deregulation, or the destructive influence of big money on the body politic and the environment, or to ask citizens to reconsider how campaigns are funded (maybe even bring up the idea of clean elections!)... but no, that would require a functioning media whose purpose was to enlighten the citizens. We do not have that. The media charged with sparking any meaningful national conversation is too busy trying to sell us viagra, hamburgers, and iphones.

Anyway, I'm sure somebody will come along spouting about how the efficiency of markets will produce the optimal result for society in the long-run, and I'm just as sure that whoever does so will either be an idiot or a sociopath.

BP, like any multi-billion dollar corporation, lives by The Gold'n Rule - "Whoever has the gold . . . rules!" When you have that much money, you have the government in your pocket. When you have the government in your pocket, you control the gold and you don't have to answer for yourself.

I understand that there is a certain need to save face. There is a certain need to be concerned about your interests. What I don't understand is why a company that makes billions of dollars a year is hesitant to spend 500 grand on a simple safety device.

Everyone with any sense can see that BP ignored the rules and created a disaster. What I don't understand is why BP didn't they just take the precautions in the first place and avoid this whole mess.

Maybe I'm just ignorant. I don't get it.

"A name flashed on the screen in the subtitles, the name of one of the commandants at Treblinka death camp. At first I thought the name was "Ebert" - my name. Then I realized it was "Eberl." I felt a moment of relief, and then a moment of intense introspection as I realized that it made no difference what the subtitle said. The message of this film (if we believe in the brotherhood of man) is that these crimes were committed by people like us, against people like us."..from Ebert's review of Shoah

Both the satanic and the godly are essential ingredient's of every human life without exception. At least that is the fundamental premise of modern Buddhism. Environmental destruction, WNDs and Holocausts have a common origin, deep in the human mind, yours and mine. When Gandhi was asked what he he thought of modern civilization, he quipped, "I think it's a good idea."

http://www.daisakuikeda.org/assets/files/peace2010.pdf

Dear Roger;

There you are!

I missed you.

You know, you can go anywhere on the Internet and every conservative has the exact same talking points. So naturally, when I saw Tea Partier Randy Masters' name, I knew he'd pull out that "it's actually the environmentalists' fault that we can't drill closer to shore, because they wouldn't let us drill wherever we want" line. I would have bet money on it.

Of course, the line itself is a red herring. BP's failure to take safety seriously has nothing to do with being unable to drill in ANWR. Even if they did drill in other locations, they would be out there eventually, and something like this would have been inevitable in an anti-regulation environment.

Conservatives spent decades attacking regulation as "red tape", appointing heads of regulatory agencies whose sympathies lay with the industries they were supposed to regulate, and promoting the theory that the free market would compel corporations to take care of public safety on their own. The BP spill is not just an environmental disaster: it is crystal-clear disproof of that theory (a theory which was shockingly naive in the first place, but I digress).

This blog follows your previous blog on architecture quite nicely. Both blogs look at how the power of economics trumps life itself. We never ask the question of true costs when we decide what will be allowed and what will be ignored. Do we build structures that are ugly and unlivable? Yes. Why? Because we only look at the price tag to construct, not the real cost to ourselves and our environment. Do we allow the pursuit of oil at all costs? Yes, because we do not figure in true accounting for the cost of ignoring our connection to all of life on this planet. I feel sad and angry that we continue to elect representatives who refuse to speak up against ecological short-sightedness. This destruction of life and home through willful disregard of the true cost of our decisions has only one ultimate outcome should we refuse to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes.

Do corporations have a moral status, that is, can an organizational shell or abstraction created for a specific purpose (finding, refining and selling oil) be expected to have a moral sense? That may presuppose a conscience or a self-awareness for a rather blunt and inflexible instrument.
It may be worth prosecuting individuals criminally within organization who were negligent in their duty; if there are moral agents to be found, it would be in the individuals within a corporation. However, who is ultimately responsible: the managerial directive to cut costs, the government inspector who permits the site, and having passed inspection, the engineer who interprets cost cutting to mean $500K was too much for a safer well cap, the site manager who poorly reasoned that what was safe in the past would continue to be in the future, the mud man who underestimated the drilling fluid needed to stop the backpressure. Did any of them seek to intentionally sabotage the oil rig?

Conservative movie production "company" run by YOU!

Worth a chuckle or two, but not a buck or two, although that’s what they're asking for.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56

"Don't fight CIA Agents or CEOs, fight real bad guys: communists, terrorists, and evil robots."

@Randy Masters, who wrote: "Corporations are now global. But, they are also accountable through our laws for damage that they do. And no one wants less than that. Republican or Democrat. Are we in agreement on that? :)"

No, we are not in agreement on that.

The documents that define our nation, the words and phrases that all of us, politicians and engineers and farmers and burger flippers alike all quote, say nothing of corporations.

"We the people" does not speak of rights for corporations, but of human beings. And while that includes the right of people to gather and cooperate in ventures for profit, it does not define any inherent rights for the organization itself.

I am all in favor of capitalism. History has (or should have) taught us that cooperating in the pursuit of wealth and security via capitalism has performed many wonders and helped create wealth that slowly, painfully, spread throughout both American society and the world at large.

But capitalism has mutated. Corporations used to have certain responsibilities that were placed on such organizations by society at large; responsibilities that included insuring that society itself would share in the prosperity engendered in the capitalist dream. That is seldom the case any more.

Now we have large groups of talking heads and entire ideologies arguing that whatever benefits the corporation must necessarily benefit the rest of humanity, when all too clearly that is simply untrue.

Wealth aggregation itself is not a bad thing. What makes it dangerous to human beings is when it is taken to extremes; when the aggregation itself is the raison de etre, and the concept of sharing the benefits (wealth) earned by the few, with others not a member of the group, is viewed as having no value...intrinsic or otherwise.

Wealth that serves the advancement of the human race is a laudable goal, and when individuals profit as well I am content. Wealth that serves only itself is a moral "Catch 22" that shows every sign of ruining capitalism as a viable concept in the 21st century.

By your lights, Randy, I likely qualify as a left-wing loony; one who believes in liberal concepts denounced by many for almost 50 years now. But make no mistake: While I decry the right wing media voices who subsidize the moral legitimacy of BP and other corporations, I hold no truck with many so-called Democrats, either.

As far as I am concerned, neither of the two parties is truly interested in putting people first. Both sides are far too greedy in pursuit of the almighty campaign dollar to show any interest in what might benefit the human race as a whole, and so corporations like BP and Enron, the Savings & Loan industry and the banks, Wall Street and lawyers, all get away with behavior that would get the rest of us thrown in jail.

Or, at the very least, shunned by all their neighbors.

Fantastic post Roger. Thank you.

@Randy Masters,
Nicely done on the parroting of the Right-wing talking points.

Please point us to your data for the BP contributions to Obama's campaign, as you seem to imply that he was the recipient.Of the @.8 million that BP's employees and Political Action committees donated in the last election cycle, candidate Obama received a grand total of $71,051. All of it from BP's EMPLOYEES. none from the company itself or their PACs. http://bit.ly/b9wnz0

As for corporations being "...accountable through our laws for damage that they do." I believe there may have been a time in this country's history when that statement may have been true, but now is not that time. More often than not corporations are able to drag out any litigation against them to the point that the plaintiffs give up the ghost. Just ask some of Ms. Palin's former constituents in Alaska how they've done against Exxon over the last 20 years. Many of those folks did not outlive the case.

As for the spurious claim (of both you and the former half-governor Palin) that "We would rather be drilling close to shore or on ANWR with safer technology. Where we could get to it and stop it in less than 90 days if there is an accident...", well, it is ridiculous on it's face. I assume you have access to the internet since you did post a comment here. If so, please Google (that's a search engine that the Right doesn't see to be able to get a grip on...it puts these things called "facts" right at your fingertips) the phrase "Ixtoc I oil spill." It occurred in 200 feet (TWO HUNDRED)of water in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979. It took 10 months to contain it. http://bit.ly/9RBKnY Now you may say, "well, that was 30 years ago...things have changed." The trouble is, things have not changed. in 2010 BP deployed the exact same techniques as their predecessors did 30 years earlier. Of all the billions of dollars of profit the oil industry has made in the ensuing years, they have spent next to nothing on advancing the strategies and tactics for containment of large oil spills. That in and of itself is a criminal act and should be treated as such.

And yes yes, I am very afraid that the big nasty Democratic President will come knocking on my door asking me to pony up $20 Billion. Where were you guys when Bush was crocheting the constitution into a nice hanging plant holder? No outcry then about what the President might come ask you for (But then Bush didn't "ask" to tap your phones and look at your e-mails, he just went ahead and did it).

You guys on the Right make this way too easy some times.

I think the United States needs a Revolution and not one sponsored by a major corporation.

I think you need to lower your material expectations and be happy with less.

I think the American dream needs an over haul.

I think 35% of the United States is willfully ignorant and or insane.

I think Obama miscalculated when he thought he could use reason to convince people to work with him, and to make things better.

I think you've turned into Rome.

I think you're a dying Empire - but not one without hope.

I think what America needs is to stop talking about its problems and issues and actually do something about them.

And so I say again; you need a social revolution.

You need to empower more women. :)

I was led to believe that you had lost your voice. I was clearly misled. I'm pretty sure I didn't listen to you near enough in years past. I'm listening now.

Many of us are saying the same things about BP but for the most part, we are being ignored. You are internationally famous so when you say these things, it is more likely that they will be heard by the many who need to hear them. Thank you for saying them and saying them with such eloquence. May you continue offering up what needs to be said for many years to come.

Another well reasoned and thoughtfully written article. Thanks for your insight Roger.

Well said but don't feel be too down on the US.

I live in Australia where the government was planning to raise taxes on mining. The big companies spent a few million on TV ads and got billions removed from the tax. I find it amazing that more than 2% of the population could agree with them.

Money talks. Politicians love to listen. Corporations can make lots of conversation.

I think the basic problem is two-fold. One, the Friedmanite Chicago School of Economics convinced everyone that the only purpose of government was to provide stewardship of the economy. At that point, politicians signed on to the philosophy that their only priority was to protect the stock market, instead of protecting jobs, communities and land.

Two, electoral politics evolved to become solely about getting elected, not governing. Politicians become very risk-adverse when their sole goal is to get elected. Then they become much less interested in rocking the boat or taking on a big, revolutionary project. It's sad to say, but the politicians and elites who run your country today would never have started or fought your Revolution.

"Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.

The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world...in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

--Arthur Jensen, "Network" (Paddy Chayefsky)

And why, Roger, why are we still so thirsty for oil when we've been periodically sitting in lines for gas since the 1970's? We don't have the national will to spend the bucks to develop petroleum-free transportation on a scale widely available to the middle-class consumer! Both parties bear responsibility; they've each had periods of power since then and neither has done anything decisive and permanent. Oh, we had demands for a few years for increased fuel efficiency in our autos, and then we caved to corporate demands for a little leniency.

Do we encourage innovative entrepreneurs? No. Do we educate and encourage and inspire our brightest students? No, we use them as tutors for the average in our heterogenous classrooms because we must not leave any child behind. (Sorry--a burst of frustration from a teacher here.)

Ever see that doc about the rise of BP, Salo or something? Pretty intriguing flick about the inner workings of a big oil industry.

Hi Roger, here in India we are sick and we are tired of Pakistan's obfuscations. And by "Pakistan" i mean their establishment, i am sure their citizens are as good (or as bad) as any other country's. Now that America is waking up to Pakistan's two timing behavior, they will understand and appreciate that this rogue nation sits in India's backyard and creates nothing but trouble.

Didn't BP just post a quarterly earnings of $5 billion? And, yet, they have not paid in a single bit to relieve coastal businesses hurt by the spill. BP and several major corporations will always have that invisible blanket to hide under. As you said, Roger, profits dictate quite a bit. How a company can post $5 billion in profit with the cloud of the worst man made disaster over their head is beyond me. I remember that commercial BP had on radio about serving local communities and economies. Basically, if you boycott BP gas stations, it would be detrimental to us all. Could it hurt to actually try boycotting to see what happens? The opposite to that seems to have been $5 billion in profit. Hmmmmmm...

Representative Joe Barton of Texas (R, of course) is to BP - and by extension corporate power - what Uncle Ruckus is to racism. Most conservatives don't even realize it. Some conservatives defend BP by citing propaganda funded both directly and indirectly by the very corporations in question. Some defend BP on principle, for by defending BP they defend their ideological purity. In both cases, you have what I like to call a defense of the indefensible. The impulse by Michelle Malkin to defend the internment of Japanese-Americans, of Rep. Barton to apologize to BP, that's the defense of the indefensible. And let's not forget the flip side of this paradigm, such as Glenn Beck talking about the term "social justice" as if it were a BAD thing - that is, taking what was once widely regarded as a good thing and turning it into a bad thing, then watching your drones eat it up.

There's the willful manipulation of facts to align with your ideology. Then, there's discarding common sense, morality, and any shred of dignity to defend the pricks who are pissing on you and calling it rain. Doing things like this requires tremendous audacity and equally tremendous contempt for the intelligence of Americans, the latter which I fear may in fact be well-founded contempt. I don't give a shit if it's "not thinking too kindly of my neighbors". It's not elitist if it's true.

@ Randy Masters: "Corporations are now global. But, they are also accountable through our laws for damage that they do. And no one wants less than that. Republican or Democrat."

No one wants less than that? You may think me cynical for thinking that conservatives and corporate Democrats do in fact want less than that. They want less regulations, less government; in fact, some would rather see government shrunk to the point where they could drag it into a bathtub and drown it.

WE are the government - do conservatives even REMEMBER civics class?

Such a small government is invariably good for corporate America because it means less power in the hands of ordinary citizens. Less taxation on the wealthy essentially means more power for an elite few and bupkus for the rest of the teeming masses. And finally, less "government" means less accountability for BP and other corporations from Monsanto to Exxon Mobil as they continue to go unpunished for their crimes, both illegal and signed into law, now and in the foreseeable future. For profits trump everything, and Milton Friedman must NOT be proven wrong. Preserving the ideological purity of capitalism means towing the corporate line. THAT'S defending the indefensible.

"Nobody wants less than that"? I think THAT's by far the more cynical statement. You know Sarah Palin was fed those idiotic talking points by some partisan hack, and now you're out here defending them. Measures WERE opposed to regulate BP, and they WERE for the reasons Ebert implied. What the hell is wrong with you? You know very well the ideological strain that runs through Fox News and the right wind media. How can you just pretend that it's not there?

Eleven people are dead because BP neglected their rigs and lobbied their way to laxer regulations, even as they violated them. The Gulf of Mexico is ruined; countless birds killed, massive death in the wake of a giant oil slick. Countless businesses lost, livelihoods ruined forever. If BP were to liquidate their entire company they STILL might not be able to fix this mess. You have nothing to defend, and even if you did you'd only have a technicality, a quibble, whatever you could throw at Ebert to protect the threatened foundations of a bankrupt ideology. I've been a regular reader of Ebert's blog for a while now, and I've noticed your comments. Clearly you're no idiot, and I don't believe you work for BP; explain yourself.

@Randy Masters

"Neighbors who understand that if our President is powerful enough to demand money from the bad guy without the courts acting, then he is powerful enough to demand it from you, eventually."

There you go proving Roger's point - what does this "threat" have at all to do with socialism? It sounds more like a dictatorship to me.

Not that it impacts your argument at all, but by what means are you saying that BP is the 4th largest company in the world, and that Wal-Mart is the biggest?
By market cap (number of shares x value of each shares), Exxon is the largest U.S. company, followed by Apple and Microsoft. PetroChina and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China are also on the list. (1. Exxon, 2. PetroChina, 3. Apple, 4. Industrial Bank, 5. Microsoft)

BP isn't one of the biggest companies by that metric, neither is Wal-Mart (though I believe that's the largest in terms of number of employees). And for what its worth, the market cap of BP has been cut in half since the spill as the stock has tumbled.

Again, it doesn't change your argument, but I think those points should be clarified.

They just think money can buy immunity. The worst part? It seems they're right.
People tend to insult others and their way of thinking instead of thinking rational arguments.
And of course, not only few people know what is a socialist, but I assure you even less know what is exactly a communist. "A communist? They are the bane of our existence! They are evil dictators who want to enslave people and make them work for nothing!" Well, maybe it's just another economic and political model. And maybe people should not just base on Stalin's or Castro's idea of communist.

Just think about this, Roger: the oil will eventually go dry (this century, it seems) and then all the world will go to heck.

I think this is another one of those cases where a handful of loud, ignorant people have been allowed to dominate the tenor of the discussion, such as Rush Limbaugh, whose fans are even a bit baffled at the way he's been claiming the gulf will take care of itself, or the senator who apologized to Tony Hayward for the way the government's been treating him, a comment that outraged most of his fellow Republicans. The only people I've heard from who have any rational reason to want to support BP are, ironically enough, the people in the gulf area, for whom oil giants such as BP are a major source of employment. The problem here is that while we all hate BP we also need them to fix this, which ties our hands a bit in how much we can chastise them.

On an interesting side note, I've been spending my summer in Austin, TX, where a local taco place has created a special taco called the Damn BP (shrimp, onions, cilantro, and some hot sauce)and each taco bought contributes to the clean up effort.

As a European, I do not understand this great divide between us and Americans. Very generally speaking, Europeans are afraid of corporations but trust (to some extent) their governments. Americans are deathly afraid of their government, but trust in the corporations, because “the market will regulate itself”.

But you elect your government officials. You cannot elect corporate leadership. And, more importantly, corporations’ number one goal is profit. Over everything else! Why would you put more trust into such an entity?

Sometimes, I really feel that neocons simply want to do as much harm to others as humanly possible. And not for money or self-interest, but simply because they like it when people are harmed. If the environment was destroyed and it meant the extinction of the human race, they would laugh with delight. That's just the kind of sadistic people they are.

Here's the status quo:

The neo-con ideological base is a front constructed by private entities to suit their own interests, which is maintained and exacerbated by the mainstream media outlets of American 'news', in order to manipulate a large chunk of the population by means of propaganda and sensationalism, in a positive feedback loop which feeds money back to the whole thing and allows it to keep right on spinning.

Here's the problem:

This memetic hate-machine has no counterpart. From time to time, sure, it can be opposed: a clip of John Stewart taking someone to task circulates Youtube for a few days; Obama wins an election by deploying tactical calm and reason amidst a maelstrom of batshit insanity.

But by and large, on the week-to-week, there is no opposing force to this amorphous entity that has become as powerful as, if not more so, than the government of the United States.

I'm not even sure what such an oppositional power would have to look like. A conglomeration of left-leaning intelligentsia waging media warfare? 'Neo-dems'? Somehow I think it won't stick.

The only answer I can think of, and even SUGGESTING it bring certain kinds of people to a spitting fury, is that there needs to be some kind of regulation of what kind of content 'news' networks are allowed to play; how often they are allowed to replay it; how much money goes into and comes out of their playing it; and so forth.

We have, in the past, acknowledged as a country that propaganda by media manipulation is a real force. We've seen it used in war against our interests; we've USED it.

It is impossible, then, to look at the infrastructure of modern American media and conclude that there are no ill-effects, no broad-reaching consequences, no real THREAT being presented by allowing our largest drip-feeds of information (in an age, remember, where "information is currency") to be controlled by privately-held entities who answer to no authority of objective truth or human responsibility.

Of course any attempts to implement any bill or governmental bureau to answer this problem would be attacked outright--you can almost HEAR the frenzy FOX would whip up; "Obama = Orwell"--and rightly so, because how would something like that even work? Who would run it? How could it misused by future administrations?

Most importantly: would it be immune to the same malignant cancer in The System that it would be attempting to eliminate? My gut tells me no.

I don't know. Maybe the answer is just to outlaw television altogether. Or knock down Fox News Headquarters with a wrecking ball when no one's looking. Or pack Glenn Beck into a box and fire him into the sun.

OR WE COULD BLOG ABOUT IT!!!

They've gotten away with it. There now are benefits raising money to help those affected... Seriously? The desire to help has scuttled holding BP financially responsible. The delay tactics worked. BP's cap on public outcry is holding better than the one on the well. Shifting people into helping each other benefits, amazingly enough, BP. Everyone can join hands, help the symptom, and carry on as if there's no deeper problem. BP needed rely only on the natural (and often useful) slowness of a government to react and people's natural (and often useful) desire to help each other.

As a traditional conservative I find very little in common with a lot of the neocon movement. (I find very little that is actually conservative about the neocon movement for that matter.) Even in situations like this however, the problem is often far more complicated than most of us realize. I honestly believe there are probably only a handful of people on the planet who are truly qualified to talk and debate serious political issues. One reason I hate all of the cable news networks - is it really assumed by the american people that an issue with staggering complexity can be debated to a decent conclusion by two jackasses and a moderator (who may or may not be a jackass as well) in 5 minutes?
That being said, on the surace, BP's behaviour -and our government's in their holding BP accountable- appears inexcusable.

If you don't like politicians who take large sums of money from corporations, then it's time to start voting Green, as in the Green Party, whose members do not take donations from corporations as a matter of principle. It seems to me that we no longer have a democracy "of, by and for the people," but one that is "of, by, and for corporations," who as Roger pointed out, know no country. They do not have our best interest in mind, once again, as a matter of principle. There are ways we can act that could result in getting our democracy back and the government working for us again, but squabbling about which party in our mirror-image two-party system "started it" is never going to solve anything. Voting the corruption OUT in both parties is the only solution, but first both sides have to realize they are part of the problem.

I don't think this story should be about capitalism at all Roger .The fact is governments by themselves can not produce wealth and the subsequent jobs, private investment can but let's face it, left to his own devices Man will always look after himself first and that is where government should step in.
We also shouldn't be discussing here what percentage of supporters in congress (from each party) big business has and this also shouldn't be about whether or not it was Obama's fault that this incident ever happened (which is absurd of course) Instead of making it their #1 priority the defense of Obama I believe it should be liberals concern (and conservatives of course) to hold your elected officials responsible and here there is no denying right now it is Obama's job to make sure BP pays for every penny's worth of destruction they caused and to supervise that government does its part to guarantee this never happens again.

A modest proposal: if conservatives insist that corporations must have all the rights of people, then they should also have all the responsibilities of people. If a person was guilty of criminal negligence causing multiple deaths and an environmental disaster, he would be in jail.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to build a prison to hold a corporation. Therefore, it seems impossible to give a corporation all the rights AND responsibilities of a person. We should revisit this nonsensical idea that corporations are people.

It never seems to fail. Once a company gets incredibly large, all morals go out the door and all that matters is making more profits and growing larger at all costs.

Instead of nebulous fines and a vacant "escrow account" why don't we just FORCE BP to pay for the construction and maintenance of green energy sources right here in the U.S.?

For every 1,000 barrels of oil that spill into U.S. waters BP should be made to buy and maintain a working windmill or solar array attached to the U.S. electrical grid.

Where are the Taftites? I think Buchanan was right in that neocons got on paleocons good side and basically took over. I believe that even though I have many problems with beliefs of paleocons. The people who were the workhorses of the party are now glorified gadflies. The party countless people have worked so hard on is now demolished by horrible policy by people who should never have been accepted to any institute of higher education. In fact, basic logic classes would have been too intellectually taxing

It would be better if Mr. Howell was the RNC chairman. He wouldn't do anything to help, but he wouldn't do anything to screw it up.

When I was 14, I had a job painting fences with used motor oil. I imagine this was because real paint cost money and used motor oil was free. I wanted to be done as soon as possible because it was the heat of summer, and it was a smelly, uncomfortable job.

The oil was in a big drum that I poured into five gallon buckets, and I used old paint rollers and brushes to get it onto the fences in any way possible. The only way to do it quickly resulted in a lot of splatter. I frequently filled the buckets up as high as I could possibly manage so that I didn't have to trudge back to the drum very often. This meant that oil often splashed onto my jeans while I walked.

By the end of the first day, my clothing was more or less soaked in oil, too dirty to wash in our washer and dryer (assuming that they wouldn't light on fire in the dryer anyway), and I couldn't ruin a pair of jeans every day, so I just put on the oily clothes each morning and rode out in the the country to work.

I didn't think the job itself was quite right. Oil dripped down into the grass even when I tried not to use too much on the roller. I also tried not to spill oil on the ground, but sometimes I tripped. Even when I slowed down, there was enough splatter that I was still getting oil on my skin and clothing, so there didn't see to be any point in being deliberate. Besides, I wanted to be done quickly. Even though I thought that the job was a bad idea, $500 was a pretty strong motivator.

I spent most of a week in the sun completely covered in oil. When your skin is covered in oil, everything has a heady petroleum smell. It traps the heat, so your skin feels like it's burning. After a shower, your skin has a weird polka-dot look, as all the pores are filled with little black oil plugs.

Since April, I have thought about what it feels like to be covered in oil almost every day.

The answer to the original question, "What is the nature of (BP's) invisible protective shield?" is not that complicated. BP is the ONLY entity that can fix the leak. We are fortunate that the culpable party has the resources and the will to do what has to be done. There is no mechanism to force it.

It is more important to stem the oil than to exact punishment. For now at least. Until the flow of oil is stopped permanently, retribution--never mind justice--will have to wait.

"A giant multinational corporation is the cause of catastrophic damage."

That headline is our past, present, and future. Get used to it.

Quote from BP: "I spilled your milkshake."

We all need to review Joseph Heller's CATCH 22. Therein, put humorously, is the proposition that bombing your own troops is profitable and desirable. So, bomb them. Milo Minderbinder was right. So was Grampaw Prescott Bush, who was still managing the account for Nazi war production while the German army was killing American soldiers in 1942.

Sorry if it's not funny after all. It's practically the law, thanks to a Supreme Court decision years ago, if properly recorded by the documentary "The Corporation." A corporation's primary responsibility is to make profits for stockholders. Period.

The list of horrendous abuses is too long, from mass "negligent homicides" to deliberate. I'm sure plenty of books have been written that plenty of people just ignore. I've got such a book nobody wants to hear about. We've got medical profit systems set up so that it's more profitable to kill people than cure them. Either I'm crazy or you who don't want to know about it are. In either case, people are dying who shouldn't be. Even a little lip-service in that direction might be helpful, rather than these attempts to turn this atrocity into a national mandate for "charitable" charading.

Know the drug and alcohol problem in the Army? If you don't, you're blind, deaf, dumb, and insensitive. A JAG lawyer once told me "that's not an army problem, it's a social problem." This meant he didn't want the name of the Colonel at Fort Stewart, Georgia, who was running cocaine to the soldiers there AND running the "drug hotline." Milo Minderbinder happily at work.

However, demonizing an "elite" group of imbeciles who are put in the position to make money any way they can imagine -- the BP disaster, unsolved, has made fortunes for remaining a disaster -- is as infantile a way of looking at things as parroting duckspeak from phony "conservative" radio programs is, as our own Randy is doing.

We're in a country where rank-and-file individuals are so given over to making money, and so self-righteous about it, they don't realize how weak they have made themselves. Nor do they hear their own quiet approval of money-making methods that do lead to such disasters. Masses of people in personal money hysteria add up to the kind of behavior that then makes a profit for these cheap news shows people find so fascinating.

Apparently, I misunderstood all those "drill baby, drill!" chants a couple years ago. Their intent was to prevent ecological disaster on the Gulf-shores. Go figure.

Good morning, Mr. Ebert:

Dusting off my law school Emanuel corporation notes, I located two fundamental corporate law concepts which help explain why it is frequently extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming to sue corporations:

1. DUTY OF CARE: The law imposes on a director or officer a duty of care with respect to the corporation’s business. The director or officer must behave with that level of care which a reasonable person in similar circumstances would use. It is very rare for directors and officers to be found liable for breach of the duty of due care. (When this happens, it’s usually because there is some taint of self-dealing, but not enough to cause the court to find a formal violation of the duty of loyalty.)

However, liability for breach of the duty of due care is generally imposed only when the director or officer behaves "recklessly" or with "gross negligence." (Example: D, a director, fails to attend board meetings, fails to read financial reports, fails to obtain the advice of a lawyer or accountant even though he is on notice that the corporation is being mismanaged — taken together, these acts amount to recklessness, and thus justify holding D liable for losses suffered by the corporation that could have been prevented by a director who exercised reasonable care).

A director will not be liable merely for failing to detect wrongdoing by officers or employees. However, if the director is on notice of facts suggesting wrongdoing, he cannot close his eyes to these facts. Also, in large corporations, it may constitute a violation of due care for the directors not to put into place monitoring mechanisms (e.g., stringent internal accounting controls, and/or an audit committee) to detect wrongdoing.

Causation: In many states, even if a director or officer has violated the duty of due care he is only liable for damages that are the proximate result of his conduct. (For instance, if the loss would have happened anyway, even had the directors all behaved with due care, there will be no liability in these courts.) However, other states, including Delaware, allow plaintiff to recover without a showing of causation against a director who violated his duty of care.

2. THE BUSINESS JUDGMENT RULE: The "business judgment rule" saves many actions from being held to be violations of the duty of due care. Relation to duty of due care: Here is how the duty of due care and the business judgment rule fit together: (1) the duty of due care imposes a fairly stern set of procedural requirements for directors’ actions; (2) once these procedural requirements are satisfied, the business judgment rule then supplies a much easier-to-satisfy standard with respect to the substance of the business decision.. Requirements: The business judgment rule basically provides that a substantively-unwise decision by a director or officer will not by itself constitute a lack of due care. However, there are three requirements (two of them procedural) which a decision by a director or officer must meet before it will be upheld by application of the business judgment rule
A. No self-dealing: First, the director or officer will not qualify for the protection of the business judgment rule if he has an "interest" in the transaction. In other words, any self-dealing by the director or officer will deprive him of the rule’s protection. (Example: X, an officer of Corp, has Corp buy supplies at inflated prices from another company of which X is secretly a major shareholder. X’s decision to have Corp buy the supplies in this manner will not be protected by the business judgment rule, because the transaction in question amounted to self-dealing by X.) [182]
B. Informed decision: Second, the decision must have been an "informed" one. That is, the director or officer must have gathered at least a reasonable amount of information about the decision before he makes it. Probably the "gross negligence" standard applies to the issue of whether the decision was an informed one. In other words, even if the director or officer is somewhat (but not grossly) negligent in failing to gather all reasonably available information, he will not lose the benefit of the rule. But if he was grossly negligent, he will lose the protection.
c. "Rational" decision: Finally, the director or officer must have "rationally believed" that his business judgment was in the corporation’s best interest. So the decision does not have to be substantively "reasonable," but it must be at least "rational" (i.e., not totally crazy). [186]

Exceptions: Even where these three requirements for the business judgment rule are satisfied, there are one or two situations where the court may find the rule inapplicable:
1. Illegal: If the act taken or approved by the director or officer is a violation of a criminal statute, the defendant will lose the benefit of the business judgment rule. (Example: The Ds, directors of a major corporation, approve the corporation’s making of illegal political contributions. Held, the directors will not be protected by the business judgment rule, because the transaction in question violated a criminal statute. [Miller v. American Telephone & Tele. Co.])
2. Pursuit of "social" goals: Some courts may hold the business judgment rule inapplicable if the director is pursuing his own social or political goals (unrelated to the corporation’s welfare). But other courts do not agree.

Essentially, if a corporation/director can show that it/he reasonally and legally made decisions solely for the corporation's benefit, it will generally be largely shielded from criminal prosecution. Only really "gross negligence" will leave the corporation vulnerable.

I imagine, Mr. Ebert, that BP can claim that it conformed to the "duty of care" and "business judgment" rules. Perhaps a prosecutor could argue that the initial explosion that triggered the spillage resulted from gross negligence, but BP's defense could counter-argue that that is an inherent risk in oil drilling that BP reasonably prepared against. Also, BP can point to its strenuous efforts to contain the spill. As for BP's alleged obfuscations and cover-ups, they could arguably justify them by stating that they were really precautions to protect public safety". BP might avoid criminal censure, but ultimately it cannot avoid tortious censure. That is, under the tort doctrine of strict liability, because BP engaged in an inherently ultrahazardous activity, it will be ultimately responsible for any damage that activity will cause. Will BP pay? Eventually, yes, but it will take some time.

If you are already cynical about our legal system, Mr. Ebert, I have probably succeeded only in exacerbating that cynicism.

I created this to show visually how I perceive BP to be:

http://www.nicky510.com/comic/spread-the-wealth/

I'm afraid you lost me at "neocon." When you use the word, what do you mean by it?

One minor correction--the $500,000 safety device that BP omitted would not have prevented the blowout. That device, an acoustic switch, would trigger the Blowout Preventer's rams remotely. However, in this case, the Blowout Preventer's rams *were* in fact triggered, and attempted to be re-triggered via submersible in the early days of the disaster.

In short, the BOP was triggered as it ought to have been, it just failed to close properly. The acoustic switch wouldn't have changed that.

Great article as always Roger, however there was a worse disaster that has been going on for years and will continue in Nigeria: http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/nigerian-spills-make-valdez-look-like-drop-in-bucket/19483921

Just no one in the West seems to recognize (I didn't know about it until last week.)

Roger, I found David Brooks' comments on this question in his June 14 column in the NY Times, The Larger Struggle (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/opinion/15brooks.html?_r=1) very relevant. He shifts the focus to free market vs state controlled energy production, and suggests in that view BP and the US are on the same side. I find his analysis interesting, but it doesn't bring me any comfort.

Regarding one of your opening statements:

"There was no proven method to contain a leak should one occur."

Relief wells have always worked, the problem is they didn't drill it concurrently. Which will probably change in the post mortem.

My suspicion is that the other things they tried (top kill, temporary cover) were known to be doomed from the start, the pressure was too high (and they were familiar with icing, it's known that hydrocarbons get colder when expanded isenthalpically).

I agree that Corporate Personhood needs to be re-examined, but I would also that the choice between corporate influence/control or government control is clearly a choice of evils. It's true that corporations are motivated by profit, but government is motivated by power.

After all, BP is responsible for the death of 11 men and the Gulf, but how many innocent civilians have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Governments can do very nasty things when they are being patriotic and following orders.

and then There Will Be Blood...

Nice "Network" quote from Phill Powell on July 26, 2010 3:57 AM. Here's a shorter one, from another movie: "There will be blood."

While capitalism is generally kept alive by bestial acts, making money from holes in the ground has always been particularly brutal. Just ask coal miners--not to mention everyone involved in extracting metals and minerals, from iron to lithium to salt. The cliched image of underground slaves whipped as they tug and hoist is a fitting emblem for the mindset necessary to run this kind of operation. Why is it, then, a surprise that BP doesn't want us watching? Onshore, offshore, anywhere you go, it's take it now, take it all, move on. As Daniel Plainview puts it, "I told you I was going to eat you! I told you I was going to eat you up!"

As a European, I do not understand this great divide between us and Americans. Very generally speaking, Europeans are afraid of corporations but trust (to some extent) their governments. Americans are deathly afraid of their government, but trust in the corporations, because “the market will regulate itself”.

Why should you trust either?

Corporations are out for profit, not out for your trust except to the extent that manipulating your trust makes for more profit. They're certainly not out for your well-being. 'Trusting' them to do what's right for anyone but themselves is the height of stupidity.

Governments are elected, yes, but getting elected requires only the ability to con enough people every few years into voting for you, followed by rampantly abusing their trust for the sake of a minority. Obama getting elected on a platform of diminished government secrecy and closing down illegal prisons, for example, has not stopped him from cheerfully extending those same programs and adding to them extrajudicial assassination of American citizens. The more you 'trust' the people who run for an office, the more likely this sort of thing is to happen.

A society functions best precisely when there is relentless suspicion of all those who wield power. Because power corrupts and yada yada, and suspicion is healthy when applied to those who both can and have every reason to abuse their power. If this is the divide between America and Europe, then both sides are simply idiotic in different ways.

I won't get into every detail of your post, Mr. Ebert, as there's certainly some ill-informed stuff in there.

Let us take just one point, blocking access to viewing the damage. There have been numerous articles written about this. As you note, BP has done this with the cooperation of law enforcment, both local and federal. If you want to go down there and take some pictures, go right ahead. When you're approached, it will be by either BP officials or officials from the Coast Guard or even the Department of Homeland Security.

I assure you that if President Obama wanted to allow photographers to have access to these sites, he could do it in a heartbeat. Neither BP nor the federal government wants you to see the extent of the damage. BP tries to restrict access for the most obvious of reasons: public relations and damage control. Now ask yourself why the federal government, via the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies, doesn't want you to see extensive videos or pictures of the results of the oil spill? If you answer anything other than "trying to keep the extent of the damage from the public prior to this year's elections," then you're really quite naiive.

Don't you think that Fox News would LOVE to go down there and show videos and image after image of the damage?

People used to complain about the press during the Bush administration (and rightfully so) but don't you think that today's media is perhaps the most compliant, subservient media we've ever had? Where's the network with enough guts to go down there and obtain some real footage and face the federal charges and fines?

I'm bothered by two points. First, that our local and federal governments have decided to restrict access to a large portion of the Gulf. Second, that our "independent" media is just going along with these restrictions.

Any "immunity" that BP enjoys derives specifically from the approach the Obama administration is taking toward the oil spill. The fund -- which BP has not funded -- is just political cover so that President Obama can say he took action. I don't doubt that some money will eventually be paid but whether or not it will be enough, only time will tell. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe the federal government is in cahoots with BP but I do remain rather skeptical of the current administration's handling of this disaster. They are certainly treating BP with kid gloves.

Roger,

A question about the $20B fund, which may explain why some had a problem with it:

If our President can simply call a private corporations and "inform them" that they will put a substantial amount of their earnings in a fund that he controls through an appointed official, without the due process of court or Congressional action, then:

How does that substantially differ from Hugo Chavez nationalizing US owned oil rigs in Venezuala last week?

I understand that BP agreed to the fund, probably anticipating more payouts if they didn't. It doesn't mitigate the question.

Ebert: Since we agree that he couldn't force BP to do it, what's your problem?

Nothing will change until WE THE PEOPLE rise up and protest the injustice. I live in New Orleans. For weeks my eyes and nose burn and my throat has a dry feeling like I'm getting a cold…but I don't. The lies about this gusher are mounting. The environmental fallout will be massive. We're not being told the truth and our lives are at stake because of it. Our children's lives are at stake as well as our grandchildren.

Fight to end lobbying. Vote for candidates who support alternative energies. Write and call the White House and all your representatives daily.

WE THE PEOPLE are the cause AND the solution.

Neoconservatives amaze me. No other group works as hard to reverse the hard work of other groups.

For information on lobbying, donations, etc., it's all right here:

opensecrets.org

For Oil/Gas:

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01

Omer M

Roger,

I was unable to find an email for you, so decided to use this platform to contact you.

Can you please comment on the granting of the APSE Red Smith Award to Mitch Albom? It seems to have generated significant reponse within the realm of sportswriters whose personal opinion of Mitch may have influenced their criticisms.

I'd love to hear your opinion as a journalist and commentator.

Thanks,

Luis

Thank you for speaking out. You write eloquently and I am moved further to do my own part on reducing the use of oil products and also demand justice that these criminals be brought to justice.

Here is an ongoing list of why I boycott BP:

Burning turtles, lying, making deals with and for terrorists, spilling in Alaska and Colorado and not cleaning it, killing 11 people, 15 in 1995, using deadly neurotoxin Corexit dispersant to avoid fines, overthrowing Iranian democracy in 1954, tony hayward, attacking Columbian workers with the Columbian Army, price gouging, 760 safety violations in three years, wildlife mega kill, paying off local law enforcement to be their enforcement, overriding rig workers concerns, making media blackouts, intimidating, polluting, endangering the people of the Gulf, benzene in the air, no back up plan, incompetence, criminal negligence, bribery, url purchases, informationcontrol, Alaskan drilling "Island" because offshore is prohibited, "small people", "I want my life back", "There are other places you can get shrimp", sponsoring the world cup, tens of millions on commercials, blocking media access, possessing thad allen, owning the epa, "effects will be modest at best, minimal.", releasing mass quantities of toxic chemicals in the air from the Houston refinery just before the rig explosion, stock sell offs, tony hayward, disregard for life, buying scientists, photoshopped images of their "command center", dumping dispersant laden oil in landfills without proper protection, blowing up whales, not paying settlements out in a timely dependable fashion, the pets who have been given up by their owners because of poverty, slaying wild horses to get oil leases, being bad at photoshop, evil, etc...

@ Phil Powell

In 1983 (when I first saw it as a teenager), I thought Network was fascinating. I watched it again last year, and, frankly, it scared the crap out of me. What a horrifyingly prescient film!

Marie, we are bloated and becoming more and more detached from one another in the US of A.

It is increasingly possible to surround yourself only with clones. All human activity is subject to some kind of loyalty test, whether the labels on clothes or stations on television and radio.

Little clumps here, little clumps there. Nobody minding the store. The 35% insane number sounds optimistic to me. I take comfort in things like Thornton Wilder's By the Skin of Our Teeth, like anyone knows that play anymore.

Time will tell if the great American experiment can survive. I hope so. We have been in the New Age of the Robber Barons for a while now. Unfortunately they also control the microphones, except for little clumps -- see above -- where people try to reach out to one another without rancor. It has always been a rough ride.

I haven't met anyone, whether Democrat or Republican, that says BP shouldn't pay for the spill. The Republicans I talk to don't seem to share Fox's views on it. They do however feel some responsibility as a nation for allowing it to happen. I understand that. It's different whenever you grant someone permission to chop down a tree and it turns out they didn't tie any safety ropes to it, so it fell on your own house. You hired the company, so you have some responsibility for allowing inept crews onto your property. However, yes, it's the company's fault. They skimped on safety and now they have to pay the price.

With BP, we (Congress) basically said, "Don't worry about the ropes, just chop it down as fast as you can. Oh, whoops, it feel into our house, now you pay for it." Make no mistake, BP should have said NO. They should have taken the proper steps to ensure the safety of THEIR workers, which were vaporized in the explosion. They didn't. They killed 11 people. Now we have all sorts of ecological problems and BP NEEDS to pay for it. That doesn't make us any less schlemiels for allowing it to happen.

I hope the President continues to use this situation to push for alternative energy sources. Maybe we can spread out the sources so we don't have to rely so thoroughly on fossil fuels. If this wasn't a wake up call to all the people on the fence, I have no idea what it will take to convince them of the oil industry's destructive nature.

Perhaps we have no skin in this game.

Teddy Roosevelt's trustbusting days were a different time. Books like "The Octopus", Norris's chronicle of the power of the railroads and how they wielded it, were widely read and the suffering and wrongs inflicted by nascent corporations at the turn of the century were unimpinged by law, heavy-handed and frightening in their newly borne aspect.

Now is not that case. We are naive enough to think we have saddled this corporate beast with the laws and agencies that have arisen to meet its challenges: child labor laws,safety and health standards, sensible financial rules and regulations. But, as we have seen - particularly in the financial sector - the beast is large, it is inteliigent and it adapts.

For it has now become the source from which the cash to fund political parties, ambitions, and our democracy draws its power.

Our leaders, and we ourselves, suckle at this teat, greedily.

Even in the midst of a horrendous recession, most of the US citizenry is comfortable when that comfort is weighed against the vast majority of humans that live on this planet. Would you trade places with the children of the Sudan who are now targeted by terrorist groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army? Perhaps the Chinese farmer making less than $1.25 a day? Maybe the women living under an oppression that makes the ironing of breasts in Cameroon and genital mutilation in Saudi Arabia a cultural norm?

No. We know we got it good. Even now. We are damned lucky to have been born in the USA.

The Vietnam War was protested violently because their was a draft and the government claimed the right to demand a personal sacrifice and duty to a controversial war - whether you wanted to or not.

We had skin in that game. We got involved.

Wikileaks release of the 90,000 pages of documents about Afghanistan will not get the play the Pentagon Papers did for precisely that reason. An all-volunteer army gives us the moral foundation - however shaky - to look away and ignore it - until there is no longer that choice.

When will we awaken from our sleepy feeding at the belly of the corporate beast?

Not now. Clearly times are not hard enough. BP will continue to walk the earth if only because its failure can not be allowed by business or an administration that does not want the "business-killing" albatross hung around its neck.

Not now. An optimist would've thought that an underwater volcano of oil would have roused this great nation to call for a withdrawal from our addiction to fossil fuels. It did not and an energy and climate bill is DOA; just as the corporate interests desire.

Not now. When there are still some for whom this recession only means giving up the summer home or changing our cell-phone plan, minimizing our insurance coverage, and resorting to the horror of basic cable.

Who can know what will awaken us? Will it be social networking? Will it be another man-made natural disaster? Will it be an event unimaginable that galvanizes a drowzy nation and puts some sort of skin into this game?

Or will it just be too late?

Roger is right. Our values have changed. I propose the change is a simple and backwards one. We no longer see ourselves as in in this together. You know this because your eyes glazed over at the paragraph citing the Sudan and China and Cameroon and Saudi Arabia.

No. Now today's value is every man for himself.

I found my tit. You go get yours.

(PS - to Phill Powell. Loved the Network reference. 1976 and Chayefsky's prescience on the News Business, Reality TV, Corporate America and the consumer culture (Holden's fade to black speech) is absurdly accurate. He hit more nails on the head than Orwell. But I particularly like the bits you omitted.

The beginning of that scene: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature!! And. You. Will. Atone."

And the end: "I have seen the face of God."

PPS What does it say about America that "Rocky" beat out "Taxi Driver", "All the President's Men" and "Network" for best picture academy gold that year? Aside from the fact that Hollywood used to be able to put together a good film on a regular basis?

Those who accept it as an axiom that corporate profits come before the needs of citizens and governments are the same people who vote for tax cuts for billionaires. How these people can consistently be hoodwinked into voting against their self-interests is beyond my ability to explain.

For some twisted reason, sociopathic behavior is rewarded with huge bonuses. If pathological greed were to be recognized for what it is--an antisocial psychological disorder--perhaps these executives could be committed to mental hospitals where they would receive the care and re-education needed to become productive members of society. As it stands it seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

And here's a quote from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: "The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."

..smelling like those disinfectant cakes you see at the bottoms of urinals...RE

The urinary simile is precise. Blatant misdoings are traditionally clothed in glibness. The argument of force supersedes all force of argument. History is witness.

a very concise and thorough summary to which I would two observations: BP's initial reactions set the stage for all to follow: Their version of damage control was to push all workers on the exploded rig to sign a waiver of claims. This tells us all about BP's ideas of damage control. The other is that this unfolded predictably. No surprise BP has not put a dime into a fund, as promised. No surprise there is no politically driven movement to force them into any level of compliance. No matter who is in power - who walks the hallowed corridors - they all got there the same way. Millions of dollars were spent to put and keep them there, and they and their handlers well know where their allegiance must lie. The solution to this debacle is to take the money out of the election process. Let the news media give equal coverage to all candidates and forbid any spending by political parties, and please PLEASE forbid them from going to their constituency for money. How can we do this?

Well maybe because they are the ones that still have some money, but I doubt it. We seem to be running global economy on Ponzi scheme.

List of external debt from CIA world fact book

The external dept contains public and private debt to nonresidents, that includes to my knowledge government, corporations, businesses and individuals. And as you can see of 194 countries have debt. According to Wiki there are 203 sovereign states, that leaves us with 9 countries without the debt.

I don't know where the money comes from. If anyone care to explain I'm more than willing to listen. But seems that everyone is borrowing from one another without means to repay.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I have followed your work and read much of your material over the years with appreciation.

Today a frend on Facebook posted this article and I was even more blown away.

I am totally hooked.

Thank you for this brilliant blog. I can't wait to share it with others too!

When you get into bed with corporations like BP they always make you sleep in the wet patch. Sorry for the 'crude' humour!

A small bit of trivia that has nothing to do with the issue at hand (but more with the usual content of the Ebert blog): Saul Bass, who did those amazing animated titles sequences for Preminger and Hitchcock films, designed the BP shield logo.

The new logo is pretty offensive because it paints BP as a company that has such environmental concerns.

I had my birthday yesterday.
I Turned 22.
I hadn't listened to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' in awhile so I popped it in.
Dylan was 22 when that album came out.
One stanza has been stuck in my mind since. It’s from 'Masters of War.'

"You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins"

Honestly, until recently I never quite understood those lines (I guess that’s growing up for you). These days, as I am sure then, the world looked bleak. And this bleakness was created by men in suits in boardrooms. When I think of the problems of the world the bottom drops out of my stomach. These people have made me feel ancient. When I think about what lies ahead, meaning, a good 50-60+ more years for me on this Earth I feel weary. The task of living that long under these circumstances seems insurmountable. And to bring a child into this world, to take on the same burdens almost seems inhumane.

The baby boomers lived at a great time, or at least a better time than now. America was rich and at the top of its game. I think this is what gave the boomers hope for change. I, and my generation, have instead grown up in sort of the gilded age 2.0. A new industrial revolution, one brought about by computers and the Internet, has created yet another society run by super rich industrialists. And more and more I feel like everything I do has been planned out to distract me from the real problems. All of my purchases, my wants, and dreams are just things to keep me complacent while the upper crust stays in control. They need us to believe we are well off; to believe that we can do anything we want to do, and get anything we want to get. They want us to think that if you make six figures in a year that you are set. They don’t want us to realize that if you make $100k a year, and he makes $25 million a year that it will take you 250 years to make the amount of money that he did in 1 year.

My only hope comes from looking at history. The gilded age ended with a depression. When society is economically this lopsided catastrophe will happen, as it has in cycles for decades. This depression brought on the progressive movements in the early 20th century. I can only hope that history can repeat itself in the 21st century. And that somehow the cycle will break then, and progressivism will become the norm. Until it does I shall live in fear for myself and those that will follow. Because, I am very afraid that the cycle has already broken, and that the progressives have lost.

So you say that corporations become too powerful when they grow too large. Absolutely, and the same can be said for governments.

The laws are already there to avoid such a disaster as the Gulf spill. The problem is, we have an Administration that isn't interested in enforcing them. There are too many government departments, too many layers of secrecy and far too much corruption. As with any corporation, the CEO is ultimately responsible. Why aren't the same people who cried out for the termination of Tony Hayward's position demanding the same to 0bama? No company on Earth would retain the services of such a buffoon. At least BP has the mechanism to get rid of their Commander in Chief. "On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does." -Will Rogers.

Thanks for the tepid defense of "traditional conservatives", as if it's inherently suggested there are too many to name. So close Mr. Ebert, you've almost got it. Now you just need to realize the Democratic Party is just as corrupt as the GOP. And I for one, do not believe 0bama is a pure "socialist". Rather, the term "Fascist Corporatist" is a better fit.

if i could find the source, i would. i remember reading that a congressional committee ordered BP and other companies to install the blow-out protection devices. then key committee members were replaced with specific individuals hand picked by the bush administration. shortly after, that committee backed off on the blow-out protection device.

Correct anything I might say that is wrong please because I haven't read too much about this. It seems like you are going after fox and republicans which is understandable since you are a liberal. Well what has the Government controled by democrats done? I don't think they've done anything. You are the ones begging for government regulation and when there is the perfect time for the government to act, and they don't you sit back and continuously point out that republicans support BP. You can't honestly believe a company like BP can keep the government out of those areas if the government actually tried. . . They probably aren't doing much. . . I'm not republican or democrat. I think both are corrupt and you should know both are corrupt. . . So why only shine a light on the republicans? The elction is over. You can move on to pointing out the fact the Obama hasn't done anything good for the country as a whole yet. Be honest

Truthfully, the energy industry has been making hay while the legislative sun shines for decades; big industry led to big oil, and big oil is big energy by another name. Although BP is a British firm, it is by no means unique in its flouting of safety protocols, or its disdain for equitable enforcement.
The worst part of all of this, is its not unique, or new, or the last of a bad business.

@Raymond Ogilvie on July 26, 2010 8:26 AM

...I really feel that neocons simply want to do as much harm to others as humanly possible...simply because they like it when people are harmed. If the environment was destroyed and it meant the extinction of the human race, they would laugh with delight. That's just the kind of sadistic people they are.

Raymond, I realize you don't really believe this; I think I have my sarcasm meter properly calibrated. I agree that it sometimes seems that the neocons are moustache-twirling bad guys, but it's simply not true. To quote Claude Rains as Prince John in the Adventures of Robin Hood, when his knights speak about hanging peasants who don't pay taxes, "Not too many, mind, else there'll be no one left to pay the taxes."

My personal feeling is that neocons are extreme libertarians who justify looting the government because in their view anything the government takes out of the economy is theft. They're just...taking back what's theirs.

I was just wondering something. If corporations are technically considered people due to the interpretations of the 14th Amendment, then logically, couldn't they be charged with murder?

Ebert: Seems that way. I just tweeted this.

"How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?"

This is THE question of our time right now. How do people vote for the very thing that will not only not help them but actually hurt them?

It's the perfect storm of a systemic failure in our education system, a culture of unapologetic greed, and the mistake of capitalism that makes people believe that everyone will be rich one day.

roger, thanks for stating clearly some obvious truths. however, its no mystery why corporations have immunity from wrongdoing. the reason is that our political system has been distorted so that BOATLOADS OF MONEY ARE REQUIRED TO GET ELECTED. elections are won or lost long before the ballot box, the result is based entirely on the size of the "warchest". and that is where the devils bargain is made. the candidate takes the money in exchange for "favors" and preferential treatment. then when he is elected today, he is primarily an agent/representative of the corporations that funded his campaign. he is not a free-thinker.

the solution is in 3 clear steps :

a) campaign finance reform(public funding ONLY)
b) term limits (ie, NO MORE than 12 years)
c) lobbyists kicked off the hill

and with those 3 steps, we can decimate corp influence peddling and return integrity and free-thinking to our government.

Thank you for writing a truly excellent review of this tragic and tawdry affair, Mr. Ebert. But if you're really interested in how corporations came to enjoy such immunity, all you really need to remember is my favorite line from "All the President's Men." It was uttered by "Deep Throat" in a parking garage:

"Follow The Money."

There's a reason Joe Barton apologized to Tony Heyward for what he described as a $20 billion White House "shakedown." No one in Congress gets more money from oil companies than Joe Barton.

The thing I'll really be curious to see is how quickly the corporate apologists who so stridently argued for corporate "personhood" when it came to financing their political campaigns will change their tune when it comes to serving a jail term for eleven counts of manslaughter. After all, the alarm system on the Deepwater Horizon rig wasn't disabled by BP's corporate charter, but rather by BP's management. And if they ever get convicted of that, I'm certain Joe Barton and his ilk will be ready to apologize for that "injustice."

Why do they always get away with it?

I think Mr. Pacino can sum this up rather easily:

*ahem* "MONNAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

When you say "greatest man-made environmental disaster in our history," do you mean specifically in American history? Because that would have to go to Chernobyl.

I otherwise agree with the substance of your argument. Although BP's oversights may have "only" caused the second-most disastrous man-made environmental calamity in human history (third-most if you count global warming overall, which I'm not sure that I do), the oversights are still unforgivable.

Brilliant, Roger! This is the best piece I have read YET on our current situation in this Nation! We no longer have a government by & for the people. Big Business is running the world and all its' governments, including our own. It's something we've always had to be watchful for and fight against; it's what elections and checks & balances are all about. But, we ("The People") have dropped the ball and stopped holding our leaders accountable. I've read that values today are more "focused on self", so those eager to "lead" in order to further their personal interest are able to do so, while the rest of us are too focused our own personal pursuits to care enough, or work for change. What everyone needs to realize is that we ALL have a PERSONAL (self) stake in how our country is run. We're paying the bills! (And the PRICE!)

Roger,

I was with you for the first few paragraphs. You lost me when you started blaming "neocons."

Here is a fun exercise: Anytime this blog references "neocons" or "fox news" replace it with "bogeymen", or "commies" (if you're nostalgic for the Red Scare), or "Jews" or whatever group you have an ax to grind with.

This blog entry is a mixture of sincere and justified outrage over a terrible environmental disaster and conspiracy theory twaddle.

Personally, I think the New Black Panther party is acting in league with Yale's Skull and Bones (George W. Bush and John Kerry are members!!!!) to skew media reporting of the Gulf spill.

Roger, thank you for this and for all of your other wonderful and thought provoking entries.

While I agree that your metaphor is an oversimplifcation of a very complex issue, it does illustrate a key point: BP has taken a very distinct lack of responsibility for a huge natural disaster that they are almost solely responsible for. Could this have happened to another oil company with a similarly cavalier disregard for safety protocols and lackluster distaster response plan? Absolutely. But it didn't -- it happened on BP's well, with their rigs and their systems and their complete inability to listen to warnings and reason from their own experts in the face of giving up a smidgen of their bloated profit margins.

I am amazed every day when I drive through my hometown and see the BP gas stations operating business as usual with customers lined up at the pump. I want to rail at them and to shake each and every one of those customers that seem to have chosen to ignore the horror of our current ecological crisis in favor of saving themselves 2 minutes of driving in order to purchase gas from a competitor. It boggles my mind.

And while I understand that you can't say that there aren't political components to the issue, it pains me that we've made what is a very simple case of right and wrong and responsibility and ownership a talking point for the political arena. As far as I'm concerned, the political crap flying in from both parties is merely serving to obfuscate the simple truth:

BP screwed up.

They showed poor judgement and conciously made bad choices with disasterous consequences. Where they drilled is not the issue -- the issue is that they did it with faulty equipment and a lack of concern for safety. They decided to forgo required safety measures and ignore the warnings of experts (even the ones they employ), all in an effort to further line their pockets and the pockets of their shareholders. Now BP (and, sadly, the rest of the gulf) is reaping what they have sown. Or they would be if they would accept responsibility, be accountable and do their best to repair the damage to the gulf and the people it supports rather than worry about the damage to their egos, profit margins and public image. Because the truth is, they have the resources and the money they need to fix it or at least make an effort to fix it (though of course, some of the damage inflicted is permanent). The sad fact of the matter is THEY JUST DON'T WANT TO. The horror of this situation lies in the fact that they have the power and clout to avoid and evade responsibility, perhaps indefinitely - and we are either unable, unwilling or incapable of making them do so.

Like most things in life with two opposing sides, the truth and reason often lie somewhere in the middle. I wish we could all agree to put aside our political agendas and cut through the crap to the heart of the issue: BP has caused serious ecological, social and economic damage and they need to take responsibility for it in a meaningful way. No spin, no whining, no crap.

What a sad state of affairs this is.

Sadly, what you have described Roger is part of the shameful evolution of America over the past several decades.

Money rules more than morality and no one seems inclined to do anything about it, especially the government.

When there is big money to be made...the hell with everything else.

Oil would be a losing proposition if oil companies were operated by dedicated philanthropists. It is largely owned by people whose feelings for American range from disdain to hatred.
All the sun and wind and biofuels together would be a fart-in-a-whirlwind compared to energy needs.
Our future is nuclear. I know, I know.
But the alternative is worse.

The spill itself—no matter how horrific it truly may be—pales in comparison to the horrific realization that our journalistic establishment—by whatever alchemy—has been neutered, muted, restrained—and what comes out of the gulf by way of being news is more akin to what you might expect to read in Pravda, for example, during the height of the cold war.

Government itself, supposedly the watchdog of our national welfare, has become a kind of co-conspirator, a facilitator, of what is fast becoming an unholy alliance between itself and Very Big Business.

What has happened, is happening, down in the Gulf that is so dire no one dare speak its name?

Mr. Ebert go camping for a week. Go camping and try to live without petroleum based products for a week. No fleese, no rubber shoes, no tent, no plastic whatsoever. And forget about driving there unless you have an electric car powered by solar panels. (That has no plastic parts in it.)

Or if you don't want to do that, count the number of different oil based products within eyesite of where you are now. See if you can keep it under 50.

As long as you aren't willing to do that, then what can I say about your rant. Stuff like this is going to happen. Preventing stuff like this and scrapping the corporate model involves high prices passed onto you the consumer. Think about all the products at Wal-Mart that are plastic based. Think about all the middle and lower class folks who would no longer have access to those products.

People seek the lowest priced goods for the best quality period. Occationally someone will pay more for less like a Hybrid vehicle but it's rare. As long as we have 6 billion consumers pushing pressure down on prices, you will have companies coming up with innovative ways as well as shortcut ways of accomodating and getting a cheaper product to market.

First a disclaimer: The "bp" in my URL stands for "background performer".

At this moment I have a movie on my DVR, still not completely viewed called "The Age of Stupid". I read your entry, Roger, and two things occur to me related to this movie. Here's the second thing: There's the country in Africa where everybody used to be poor, EVERYBODY, and then Shell discovered oil and now everybody is still poor except for the handful who are super-rich.

The first thing your post reminded me of is where someone in the movie pointed out, in terms of campaign dollars, that Big Oil is no longer the biggest supporter of the government, Big Oil IS the government.

In Africa, where people tried to push back against these things that are WRONG, the government, now rich with oil money killed them.

What's going on in the Gulf and America is the same thing, only slower, with a civilized veneer and it makes me feel scared, helpless, small and with little room for hope.

Had that oil well been owned by a company where the CEO had skin darker than what your average American, this would have been quite a different story.

They are British...they can't be bad guys, right?

Imagine if BP were IP - Iraq Petroleum - do you think for one heart beat this story would have gone the way it did?

No one really knows the depths of depravity that corporations lower themselves to. It's all about the bottom line and hiring enough lawyers to bury that bottom line so that no one ever really knows the truth or is accountable. In fact, all you have to do in America is incorporate in Delaware, and America makes it illegal for you to find out who is running a company. It's "classified" in one the smallest and probably unimportant states we have...except for their laws about corporations. Incorporate there, and you can do that online for very little money, and no one can ever know you did something very, very wrong.

And I'm pretty sure England has the same rules.

God knows, if you want to file for bankruptcy and steal a lot of money, just be sure you incorporate in Delaware..USA.

I'm a retired physician, and if Americans knew what insurance companies have been doing to them, how they hide behind the mask of being "corporations," or better yet, LLC's (limited liability corporations..has a nice ring to it, doesn't it, all you thieves) they would be lined up at the white house lawn trying to get President Obama to pass more health care legislation. All the private insurance companies, all of them...all of them, have done nothing but screw Americans for decades.

It's all a joke. We will never know the real story. We will never know who to vote for. When the bottom line is in the trillions, I'm absolutely certain you can rule everything on any website or any newscast out in terms of the truth. They pay their bills using advertising. And who has more to give towards advertising than Oil and Health Care? No one.

Most people don't know it, but health care is the biggest industry we have. Second is oil. And if you think for a minute they are out to help you here in America, well, you just haven't been paying attention.

It's not lives that corporations care about. In fact, they were invented to prevent human beings from having to pay a price. The corporation goes bankrupt, not the individual jerks who formed it.

And look how well it has turned out.

Tony Hayward is just the tip of the iceberg.

$500,000?
Why that's somewhere around .00001% of what they make in a year. It would break them.
You're a cruel man, Ebert, for trying to bankrupt a company like that.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18614_6-objective-reasons-us-army-should-invade-bp.html

Above is a link for a Cracked article titled 6 Objective Reasons the US Army Should Invade BP.
I know it is not the smartest thing to post in a blog entry like this one, but I think we can amuse ourselves for a little while.

Forget the politics. Disasters are not political. The reality is that the people who have been affected, or whose yard has a tree in it, do not have a supporter. The White House stopped almost all conversation after the 20 billion was agreed upon and BP went into PR mode. Bill Nelson and Bobby Jindal (A Dem and Repub btw) have been screaming for help. They get very little coverage. Biden jumped in a couple times for a couple hours. Mrs. Obama visited before their vacation to Maine.

Overall, there has NOT been an all out fight for the rights of Gulf residents.

We have walked the Gulf beaches and were kicked off, in not so nice a fashion, by clean up workers. We've been intercepted by BP's PR people, only to have them to fill us with talking points. (Not on camera of course).
We have asked literally dozens of sub contractors to simply explain how clean up works to our audience. No one would. (Perhaps it's because even they are having trouble getting paid. It's true)

Then we spoke to business owners who are losing businesses each passing minute. Very few outlets report that. Those are real stories. The Chef, the bartender, the hotel clerk, the Beach Cabana operator. They are all waiting for someone to stand up for them. Their only option is to look to BP.
Maybe Feinberg will make a difference. That's even a more confusing tree of accountability. Not Government, Not BP. The buck now stops with a really highly qualified attorney.

Sub-contractors run the ground ops. Not BP. The community relations person we saw in one town was an oil exploration person from BP Houston. She said "Well, its kind of all hands on deck for this one" What does she know about solving dire community issues? Nothing.
Imagine being an oysterman and trying to navigate past BP employees as their community reps.
You get my point.

Thanks for writing this article. It makes that tree falling "sound" a little louder. The reality of all of this is it will surface at some point in a documentary at Sundance. And then people will cry and say how awful it was that these people were ignored.
I say all of this hoping somebody reads this and says, "You know what.....we can do something now." And we start financially boosting these businesses in every way possible, as quickly as possible. Not just talking about it. That would be a neighborly thing to do.

When I scroll up and down and up and down at the top of this entry, the BP symbol looks like it's flapping its phalange-like rays in dismay at your shrewd analysis.

Ebert: I don't want to know how you discovered that.

Sidenote Roger: There are still yahoo ads that pop up on the suntimes site that usually cover the bottom two paragraphs of your review. Because I enjoy knowing as little about a movie as possible, I typically only read your first and last paragraphs before I see a film so I notice this frequently. Thought you'd want to know.

@Randy Masters

The "blame the environmentalists for not letting us drill in ANWR" thing is BS. Pure and simple. All you have to do is look at the reserve numbers.

In the 2002 USGS assessment of ANWR, probably reserves were estimated at 10.6 billion barrels of oil and 61.4 trillion cubic feet of gas, if all land - including tribal lands and shallow water - is included.

In the 2006 reserves for the Gulf of Mexico, we've got:
Proved: 5.22 billion barrels of oil, 16.9 trillion cubic feet of gas (this left after those fields had already produced 15.1 billion barrels of oil and 166.8 trillion cubic feet of gas)
Unproved: 4.44 billion barrels of oil, 8.3 trillion cubic feet of gas
Not available for lease yet: 1.32 billion barrels of oil, 7.7 trillion cubic feet of gas

I would not be surprised if that number has actually grown since 2006, as drilling in deeper water becomes technologically and economically more feasible.

Yes. There is a lot of oil and natural gas in ANWR. More than there might be remaining in the Gulf. But you are drinking some mighty fine kool-aid if you think that opening the ANWR reserves would make the petroleum companies abscond from the Gulf of Mexico entirely. There are still billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf. Billions, with a B at the beginning and an S at the end. And drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico is already economically feasible or they would not have been doing it.

Open up ANWR, and it's just another place to drill. The exploitation of resources in the Gulf of Mexico will continue as long as those resources are economically feasible (and legal) to produce. That's how the business works.

I'm not sure I understand how BP is "getting away with it." They will be financially liable for the damage to the Gulf and it will cost them billions. The entire mess is certainly BP's fault and is, to my mind, plain and simple criminal negligence on the part of some. They should and will be prosecuted.
No one is getting away with anything, and yet there is still the anti-corporate diatribe, as if all corporations are evil entities out to steal every last dime from the little guy and laugh while doing it.
And where were the regulators, the inspectors, the government oversight that seems so popular a tonic in the wake of disaster. Were they not also negligent, perhaps even corrupt and on the take? You want reform and you start by bringing in more of the people who screwed up the first time?

I know this is probably a bit simplistic, but I am sure Marcus Aurelius would approve. If you want to understand the magic of corporations and how they act with such seeming impunity, you must first understand what a corporation is.

A corporation is a legal fiction. An entity created by law which does not, in fact exist (in law school, it is taught that one should think of a coporation as a box. Shrug.). The sole purpose of incorporating a business is to shield the personal assets of the owner(s) of such corporation from liability for the actions of the corporation. Do you see? The entire point of the corporate structure is to minimize the risk and alleviate the personal responsibility of the owners and operators of the business for the actions of the corporation. In theory, this is done to encourage businesses to take risks (generally, financially) which a wholly-owned (small) business would not dare to do. If the financial risk does not pan out, then the only assets at risk are those of the corporation: the owner's house and car and bank account are safe. In an ideal world, this allows the coporation to be more aggressive and to grow, thus providing income and employment for more and more individuals, and thus to be more beneficial to society than a personal company could or would be (as the personal company would be too timid to grow as quickly or as large). Employing more citizens, generating more tax revenue, etc.

Now, what happens when this philosophy is applied in a less-than ideal (real) world? You get what seems to be a natural outgrowth of the underlying philosophy: a total lack of accountability. The Board and CEO (and all other executives and workers at BP) cannot be held personally liable for their actions - they are acting under the corporate shield (unless of course, such actions can be proven criminal, but then you also have to find your way through the corporate structure and somehow assign personal responsibility to an individual. Good luck, if the beaurocracy is set up in the usual maze-like fashion). So their actions become unconscionable. They protect the corporation at all costs, because that is how they draw their pay, which, once paid to them, becomes their shielded, personal assets, and cannot be taken away in consequence of anything they do (or BP does) in their official capacities.

My point of course is that real people, not the corporation, are the ones who are acting: blocking media access, releasing press reports minimizing the damages, and lobbying politicians to protect BP. And they do this to protect their corporation (the goose laying their golden eggs) no matter what, secure in the knowlege that, however egregious or immoral their actions, they will never be held to account for them. For them, what is the worst case scenario? BP goes down, either in bankruptcy, disinvestment, or is siezed by a government. And if that happens, the people who ultimately gave the orders, and were ultimately responsible for the catastrophe, simply walk away and go work for another corporation.

So, is it really surprising that BP seems immune? Isn't their immunity to responsibility just an outgrowth of the underlying philosophy or corporations in general? And are we really surprised if they act with reckless disregard for the consequences, and then do their level best to minimize the damage to BP, rather than doing their best to minimize the damage to everyone else?

PS. Don't think I am saying that corporations are not useful or necessary. I am certainly no communist of socialist (the only difference with those folks is that the legal fiction they hide behind is the government, not a corporate entity). I think that a corporation can and should be run in a beneficial manner. I am merely suggesting that corporate structure and corporate culture encourages this sort of reckless behavior, and makes it all the more necessary that governments (in this country, the people) keep a close regulatory eye on them. At least with the government, the people CAN enforce personal ethics, and can punish leaders whom they deem to have acted inappropriately. It is called voting.

I know this is probably a bit simplistic, but I am sure Marcus Aurelius would approve. If you want to understand the magic of corporations and how they act with such seeming impunity, you must first understand what a corporation is.

A corporation is a legal fiction. An entity created by law which does not, in fact exist (in law school, it is taught that one should think of a coporation as a box. Shrug.). The sole purpose of incorporating a business is to shield the personal assets of the owner(s) of such corporation from liability for the actions of the corporation. Do you see? The entire point of the corporate structure is to minimize the risk and alleviate the personal responsibility of the owners and operators of the business for the actions of the corporation. In theory, this is done to encourage businesses to take risks (generally, financially) which a wholly-owned (small) business would not dare to do. If the financial risk does not pan out, then the only assets at risk are those of the corporation: the owner's house and car and bank account are safe. In an ideal world, this allows the coporation to be more aggressive and to grow, thus providing income and employment for more and more individuals, and thus to be more beneficial to society than a personal company could or would be (as the personal company would be too timid to grow as quickly or as large). Employing more citizens, generating more tax revenue, etc.

Now, what happens when this philosophy is applied in a less-than ideal (real) world? You get what seems to be a natural outgrowth of the underlying philosophy: a total lack of accountability. The Board and CEO (and all other executives and workers at BP) cannot be held personally liable for their actions - they are acting under the corporate shield (unless of course, such actions can be proven criminal, but then you also have to find your way through the corporate structure and somehow assign personal responsibility to an individual. Good luck, if the beaurocracy is set up in the usual maze-like fashion). So their actions become unconscionable. They protect the corporation at all costs, because that is how they draw their pay, which, once paid to them, becomes their shielded, personal assets, and cannot be taken away in consequence of anything they do (or BP does) in their official capacities.

My point of course is that real people, not the corporation, are the ones who are acting: blocking media access, releasing press reports minimizing the damages, and lobbying politicians to protect BP. And they do this to protect their corporation (the goose laying their golden eggs) no matter what, secure in the knowlege that, however egregious or immoral their actions, they will never be held to account for them. For them, what is the worst case scenario? BP goes down, either in bankruptcy, disinvestment, or is siezed by a government. And if that happens, the people who ultimately gave the orders, and were ultimately responsible for the catastrophe, simply walk away and go work for another corporation.

So, is it really surprising that BP seems immune? Isn't their immunity to responsibility just an outgrowth of the underlying philosophy or corporations in general? And are we really surprised if they act with reckless disregard for the consequences, and then do their level best to minimize the damage to BP, rather than doing their best to minimize the damage to everyone else?

PS. Don't think I am saying that corporations are not useful or necessary. I am certainly no communist of socialist (the only difference with those folks is that the legal fiction they hide behind is the government, not a corporate entity). I think that a corporation can and should be run in a beneficial manner. I am merely suggesting that corporate structure and corporate culture encourages this sort of reckless behavior, and makes it all the more necessary that governments (in this country, the people) keep a close regulatory eye on them. At least with the government, the people CAN enforce personal ethics, and can punish leaders whom they deem to have acted inappropriately. It is called voting.

Roger: Sadly, the BP immunity is nothing new in corporate America. It is just now the most public of immunities. Insurance companies and large corporations have been granted unreasonable tort immunities and limitations for years. In my state, Michigan, for example, the pharmaceutical industry enjoys complete immunity from liability for producing harmful drugs, as long as the poison has been approved by the FDA. Since no drug may be introduced without FDA approval, this amounts to blanket immunity. Tort reforms in various states have limited corporate responsibility for risks that business is supposed to assume to such unreasonably low levels that they fail to protect the public and cause injury victims to go on public assistance. No, Roger, BP's immunity is nothing new; it is, simply, now in the limelight for the reasons that you state. Your expose is excellent; please expose the rest of these corporate welfare recipients and programs.

"Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole? Make a name for himself? Maybe get elected some two-bit congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here? No, I tell you. No, sir! Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."

I wonder if the BP executives have this printed above their doors.

Maybe it's time people invest in alternative energies. Like it's said that if 1% of Sahara was covered with solar thermal power plants whole world's demand for energy would be provided. You can check for more info on desertec.org. There is even a CNN video on that solution.

Here's a Modest Proposal that I'm hoping is happening already: Civil Disobedience of the directives not to record damage and suffering wildlife. Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, and let's get arrested.

I find it humorous you bring up trust busting. What would the US government break up? American BP assets? That's just a tiny fraction of this huge corporation. The US could do as it pleases and ignore political boundaries just to take care of US interests, following some historic precedents. But if the US tried to break up the company at an international level the country would possibly alienate allies where BP is a much larger component of petroleum supply than in the US.

Also if the government attempts to hold BP more accountable the company will pull out of the US and spin off US assets like a coyote gnawing at a leg caught in a trap. No one will want the assets BP has in the US or the negative publicity associated with it so people hoping for a take-over can forget it. You would have a child company that was abandoned to die leaving Uncle Sam to move in and protect the doomed company jobs, no politician will ever want to be accountable for lost jobs.

Yes it is crap that in America companies get practically all of the same protections as a citizen and virtually none of the responsibilities, but the reality is these companies don't have to play in our backyard and if we get crazy regulating them they will play somewhere else. I live in Louisiana and already I'm hearing about rigs getting ready to move to South America and the oil companies looking to ship guys overseas for work. The comparison of BP to Standard Oil is laughable. 100 years ago when the Standard was broken up the world was much different place. Come up with a more creative solution to this problem.

Just for a movie reference remember the T1000 from Terminator 2 and how the T1000 could be destroyed and would recombine back to its original form? Take a look at Ma Bell and Standard Oil. Looks analogous to the T1000 to me. So perhaps trust busting doesn't work even when there aren't international interests at stake.

Many great points, Roger.

To those who would defend BP, please note that after the Valdez spill, Exxon vastly improved their safety controls:

"In the last three years, when we look at refineries, 97 percent of the violations considered egregious and willful were given to BP. So, BP had 760. Exxon had one," says Pavel Molchanov, an oil and gas analyst at Raymond James. "That is a colossal difference."
Link to source

Though extremely complex, difficult, and expensive, this type of deep sea drilling can be made very safe. BP chose not to do so.

I'm surprised their is no mention that the original Tea Party was a protest of a corporation in bed with government. Idiots like Palin don't remember this though.

The "shake down" of BP is weird though. I'm not really sure there is a good way of handling a disaster such as this. The blatant items you listed of excluding media is of course horrible. Is there any best way of repairing the damage at this point though?

Roger, you're exactly right on all your points, as I understand what's happening here.

So, what to do?

I'd say the fix for a larger system vulnerable to layer upon layer upon layer of such extravagant abuses lies not in regulations or trust busting or the like. Whatever is done along these lines can be undone--just as the trusts have returned in full force, straddling national boundaries, and just as the New Deal has been and is being dismantled.

Instead, you have to get at the core of the problem, and that means strangling the motive. We simply must kill off the modern corporation--driven, as it is, by the quick-profit motive--and replace it with a worker-centered corporation, in which individual workers control the means of production, one vote per worker. That's socialism without state intervention (except to get the system set up.) And profits under this form would go to the workers, not the state, as you suggest.

I've worked more than 30 years for a string of corporate employers. They have determined how I have spent every minute of the most productive days of my life; I've had no voice and no choice, except to switch to another Stalinist corporate overseer. They even restrict my freedoms of speech and association outside the workplace, in point of fact, even though no corporate-owned court in the land (and they all are corporate owned, as are both political parties) would see it that way.

I am sick to death of this and I despair.

For clarification, I am talking about Jim Backus's classic portrayal of Thurston Howell III

Times have changed. Some of the agents of progress that worked so well at the time of the Founders are no longer economically or politically viable. Our nation has come of age. But the thought process of some of her inhabitants remains stuck in the past.

Many of the zealots who support pro-business, anti-union talking points have selective memory when it comes to Thomas Jefferson, yet they will routinely allude how our founders saw it, "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." Even the Founders advocated "spreading the wealth around." They warned of the rise of a permanent aristocracy, yet today we can draw a century-long straight line connecting Standard Oil to BP as you illustrated. The aristocracy has incorporated itself and is no longer exclusively linked by blood, but by "entangling alliances" in corporate board rooms.

The corruption the Founders sought to achieve by Separation of Church and State has found a safe haven in the Corporation.

Uh-oh. Looks like the spam-filter got to me previous comment. It has been a long, long time since it did that.

Wish I'd saved what I'd written to repost it. It had some good points in it. Marie mentioned one or two of them.

Oh well.

Great post Rog, let's hope the less well equipped, mentally that is, see the truth and sense in it.

Indian Idiot (H.W.)

BP!?
Yawn, BP are pussycats. They haven't even tortured or killed anyone.
For example, Unocal (bought by Chevron) in Burma.
(http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/business/Unocal-in-Burma.html

Or, how about Shell in Nigeria? (http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/nigeria-in-global-news/shell-nigerian-families-settle-suit-for-155-million.html )

BP are gonna have to kill more than a few birds if they want to play with the big boys.
But who's really responsible?
Me and you and everyone we know for not caring. Not even a little bit.

Thank you for saying, so eloquently, what so many of us feel in our hearts.

You're right, Mr. Ebert. Of course you are. And it is particularly shameful how Americans fall in line behind corporate dogma, while simultaneously demonizing the unemployed and the working poor.

Thing is, BP isn't the only demon in this little tragedy of errors. All those vendors that they hired all down the line - including Haliburton - and all the politicians all down the line - including President Obama, as a Senator - who voted for legislation that enabled them, owe in the culpability.

When we start calling for BP's head, we are being inconsistent if we don't, also, ask for all the other heads. Unfortunately, those heads have us by another part of the anatomy.

They know it. You know it. I know it.

Displaced Native American and Black-American fishermen? People who rely on tourism in The Gulf? Well, they ought to just find other jobs! It's too bad they didn't buy up some stock options when the buying was good.

We let the rich skate on their crimes, I guess, because, deep down, we all wish we were rich. If we start to question that too deeply, we risk the ache of conscience that comes from taking a long, hard look at ourselves in the mirror.

We are no different now than when we were under the banner of a King or Queen. The only difference now is that the title of our lords has changed. It is all about pure, hegemonic, unassailable power.

Neoconservatism. I don't think the word means what you think it means.

Your analysis left out the performance of Obama's Department of the Interior.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/07/07/07greenwire-bp-was-finalist-for-federal-safety-award-at-ti-72712.html

From the article:

"There are probably a lot of things Interior Department officials would like to change about the how they looked at BP Exploration and Production's drilling operations.

They've found one thing that they can change -- their website.

BP's status as a finalist for the "Safety Award for Excellence" from the disgraced and now-renamed Minerals Management Service has been deleted from Interior's site."

I guess this is an example of change we can believe in.

I personally hope BP pays for all of the clean-up costs it is liable for (20 billion will not cover the damages).

But perhaps you might write an entry detailing the amount Americans will pay to bail out housing losses connected with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (currently the tab is $145 billion and rising).

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37982580/Fannie_Freddie_Bailout_Could_Cost_Taxpayers_1_Trillion

Maybe you could enlighten readers about "neighbors" like Barney Frank, who opposed stricter regulation of the two governent-sponsored companies proposed by the last administration:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/28/franks_fingerprints_are_all_over_the_financial_fiasco/

I don't understand why BP's being vilifying specifically, when the company was simply following shoddy industry-wide practices. With all of the shortcuts in the oil industry, it was bound to happen to someone. BP was unlucky enough to draw the short straw, and unluckier yet to be a foreign company with a disaster on American shores. You think BP's got a special immunity? We wouldn't have heard half the outrage if it were Exxon Mobil, Chevron or ConocoPhillips. When you're operating a rig in waters 8,000 feet deep and then drilling down to 30,000 feet, you're going to run into a situation where shit happens eventually. Using cheaper, less reliable parts greatly increases the odds of that shit happening sooner rather than later.

Even if Congress wanted to go after BP, its power to do so is limited by the constitution. Article 1, Section 9 specifically declares that "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." This clause was included because the British Parliament abused such convictions by public outrage, and because the founders decided that the laws of a just society should not be captive to the passions of the moment.

The company formerly known as British Petroleum made one mistake that will have terrible consequences for decades to come. Leveling all of the outrage at the company lets the real perpetrators off the hook.

Culprit #1: Globalization. When Engine Charlie testified at the confirmation hearings for his appointment as Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense that he "thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa," it was probably true. After World War II, General Motors became the largest corporation when measuring its revenues as a percent of GDP. It employed more American workers than many state industries in the USSR employed Soviet workers. In 1955, General Motors became the first corporation to pay more than $1 billion in annual taxes. Just as America's success depended on General Motors, General Motors's success depended on America. Globalization has done a lot to improve living conditions in the developing world, but a terrible consequence has been the effective decoupling of American corporations from American interests. As the percentage of profits from international customers grew, the investment those companies had in America declined. If the Great Recession never ends, it will be problem for multinationals like General Electric and Exxon Mobil, but hardly an insurmountable one.

Culprit #2: Congress. For all of the outrage from our congressmen and senators, the BP oil spill is a direct result of the lax regulatory framework they put in place that allowed the infractions to go on unnoticed, and the $75 million liability cap they put in place that made a potential spill a cost-effective possibility. It's hardly fair for Congress to berate BP for playing by the rules that Congress created. Exxon Mobil has replaced General Motors as America's largest corporation when measuring its revenues as a percent of GDP, and it has a lobbying arm GM could never have dreamed of. There is a large caucus in Congress firmly in Big Oil's pocket, and the self-serving outrage after the fact is sickening.

Culprit #3: The Department of the Interior. Ken Salazar should have been removed as Secretary of the Interior as soon as the failures in the Minerals Management Service came to light. If the Department of the Interior was a well-functioning unit, it might have been able to get by with a half-witted political flunky as its head.But the Department of the Interior was and is about as far as you can get from a well-functioning unit. Former interior secretary Gale Norton resigned four years ago after being implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. A year later, the deputy secretary in charge of the endangered species list, was also forced to resign in a lobbying scandal. Over the course of Bush 43's administration, the department's maintenance backlog grew from $5 billion to $8.7 billion. As the department's inspector general succinctly stated: "Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of Interior."No earlier than September 2008, the Minerals Management Service had been the subject of a scathing report found a dozen current and former employees of the agency guilty of serious wrongdoing. They regularly excepted gifts and buy-offs from the oil industry; some even “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” The fact that Salazar didn't clean house in the agency as soon as he was confirmed is reason enough for him to be fired. The fact that he hasn't in the aftermath of the worst ecological disaster in the nation's history is absolutely criminal. The head of the agency was fired and the name was changed to the "Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement". As far as I know, that's the extent of the change.

Culprit #4: Campaign finance rules. The reason so many members of Congress are in the oil industry's pocket is a direct result of the fact that so many member of Congress could not finance their campaigns without the oil industry's help.

Culprit #5: The American People. George Bernard Shaw once noted that "democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." The current mess in government and the country was created politicians that we put into power. The terrible campaign finance rules that poison our current political dialogue were drafted by congressmen we put there, and rubber stamped by judges appointed by presidents we elected and congressmen we sent to Washington. The only weapon against the pervasive influence of money in politics is an engaged electorate. If even 51 percent of voters actually took the time to seek out information about their government and politics, there would be no need to spend all of these millions trying to trick them one way or the other.

Culprit #6: BP. They failed to follow safety rules, cheaped out on critical parts, and will have to face the consequences. But the consequences of a several billion settlement will be an easy pill to swallow for a company with a quarterly profit of over $10 billion. The other five culprits will make out much worst for their short-term thinking.

We are all part of the problem. We lead lives without personal accountability so why should our politicians, leaders and corporations be accountable? We are all powerless - raped by the big machine. Ask yourself, how many people sold their mutual funds that invest in BP or other oil stocks? I still see people filling up at BP stations every day. Take another pill America and continue stumbling on toward the end, it is very near........

"We give $8 billion a year in aid to Pakistan. In some sense, we are subsidizing our enemies."

Not to mention the 300-400 billions dollars a year Saudi Arabia is getting because our CARS are addicted to oil. The CIA reports that 90% of the terrorism funding comes from Saudi Arabia worldwide. They also paid for the Taliban.

You said, "The oil rig explosion set in motion the greatest man-made environmental disaster in our history." I disagree, even though it is easy to believe that about the oil spill. We can see and smell it. Why can't we remember the 1991 Kuwait oil disaster? What do we still think about acid rain? About our 2,000 above ground nuclear tests? How many people have the wherewithal, will or patience to measure the loss of ice in the coldest parts of the world? I'm afraid that their story will end up being your greatest man-made environmental disaster. That doesn't make the Gulf crisis any easier to bear, but as the World's Greatest Entertainer said, ... well, you know what he said.

Add to this story what happened on the BOYCOTT BP facebook page, somebody should really investigate.

Hundreds of miraculously BP loving trolls, swarming the page in waves for months.

**Individuals who play a prominent role there (in favor of the BOYCOTT) have been personally targeted, not just on that page but all over the Internet.

Teams of cyber-stalkers (not just individuals) have researched their old posts and attacked them not just on BOYCOTT BP, but everywhere.

The message seems to be "If you support this boycott and if you stand out as a frequently contributing activist we will crush you, we will destroy you as if you were an elected politician in our sights".

The long arm of some kind of organization that seems very sympathetic to BP has left a wide Internet trail of squeezing and silencing pro-BP activists.

Roger, if by chance you read this, and if you know any good investigative journalists, please put them on the trail.

Whether it's BP itself or a gang of extremists, this is a story that is being missed and needs to be told.

"Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole? Make a name for himself? Maybe get elected some two-bit congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here? No, I tell you. No, sir! Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win. "
- Tim Blake Nelson, Syriana

I wonder if the BP executives heard that speech and took it to heart.

Sorry, one typo in the last post--

When I typed,

"squeezing and silencing **pro-BP** activists."

I meant INSTEAD to type

"squeezing and silencing pro-**BOYCOTT BP** activists."

Jake (I am the same person as the other Jake if you check the sign-up info).

I am know where near as politically aligned as most Louisianians. I guess i have a transcendental way of thinking, nothing i do or say will change the way any government party operates, so i do not waste to much time worrying about it. I hate to see any one lose their jobs, but i am embarrassed by our states politicians wanting to continue drilling even though oil corporations are destroying what makes LA the unique and beautiful place that i love. I know it is going to hurt us in the short term,maybe the long term,but what about the REALLY long term? Corporations that provide services, as well as jobs, to our citizens must be held accountable 100% for there actions. The accountability to share holders is there main concern. Our government needs to work on our infrastructure, not allow companies to destroy it. I am not a member of the green party or whatever the "highly intelligent" 24 hr cable news channels call it. I do especially despise FOX and Rush HYPOCRIT Limbaugh! I may have been off topic on this post, if so do not print it. I can tell you from the experience of Hurricane Katrina and the cleanup of this spill that money is being grossly wasted! Even if it is on BP's dime! Just a view from a country boy from SE LA.

EBERT: "It is hard to say just where a big corporation is actually centered."

"[A][domestic, ie. American] corporation is deemed a citizen of any state where it is incorporated and of the state where it has its principal place of business."

"Principal place of business: Courts have taken two different views about where a corporation’s "principal place of business" is.

a. Home office: Some courts hold that the corporation’s principal place of business is ordinarily the state in which its corporate headquarters, or "home office," is located. This is sometimes called the "nerve center" test.

b. Bulk of activity: Other courts hold that the principal place of business is the place in which the corporation carries on its main production or service activities. This is sometimes called the "muscle" test. This is the more commonly-used standard."

I would imagine this definition applies to foreign corporations as well.

To be honest Roger, I am scared.

How much power do the corporations in this country really have?

I for one believed that President Obama truly wanted to change the nation for the better and reform some of the political inequity that, we all agree, exists in America. So what has rendered him so ineffective in office?

Is it possible that our elected officials, at all levels, are either the puppets of corporations or impossibly outnumbered and rendered obsolete by those who are?

Is that wealthiest 1% of the world truly the power behind the throne?

Is there really nothing we, as simple citizens, can do about healthcare, or BP, or the wars in the middle east, or the inability to implement alternative fuels, or unemployment?

Aren't these the reasons the nation voted democratic? Are the parties really both the same in all but name?

Do our votes really mean nothing if they don't coincide with a megacorp's bottom line?

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I don't really want to know the answers to those questions.

Blake

@ Nick Crush

One minor correction--the $500,000 safety device that BP omitted would not have prevented the blowout.

That meme has survived in the news because people get to point at Dick Cheney with it. As I remember, the original story that centered on BP not buying the $500k BOP had Dick Cheney's secret energy commission screwing the country for ill-gotten oil gains.

That version is not going to die easily, even with the fact that you just presented well. It's another way of saying "Bush's Fault".

Ebert: Let's agree it might not have prevented the blowout.

The part of the meme about Cheney is correct, right?

Good read. What was intriguing was your line, "Corporations know no patriotism. They are multi-national." That line reminds me of Jensen's explosively outrageous monologue in Network. Frightening how accurate the movie was, is, and will be.

Interesting thesis, I'm not a fan of BP any longer, but there are faults in the argument. US antitrust law would not apply to a British company. Secondly, in most states when the tree falls into your yard, YOU are responsible for the costs even though the tree was growing in the neighbors yard. Exception to this is notifying the neighbor ahead of time, in writing and with a received receipt from the neighbor that you believe the tree in question to be a risk to your property or safety prior to it falling.

@ Indian Idiot (H.W.) wrote on July 26, 2010 5:30 PM

"Uh-oh. Looks like the spam-filter got to my previous comment. It has been a long, long time since it did that. Wish I'd saved what I'd written to re-post it. It had some good points in it. Marie mentioned one or two of them. Oh well. Great post Rog, let's hope the less well equipped, mentally that is, see the truth and sense in it."

Hey there H.W...!

First, if you ever want to check and see if one of your comments has been posted; just Ctrl+F your name.

That's what I did for you, and TA DA!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/bps_tree_fell_on_my_lawn.html#comment-985424

I believe that's your missing post?

Meanwhile...

I think Americans know what they need to do. They just can't motivate themselves in sufficient numbers to make it happen.

I say that because every time the issue comes up, there's invariably a overwhelming consensus regarding the self-serving nature of big business and corporations. Yet when faced with taking action, most resolve gives way to mere lip-service.

Martin Luther King. Cindy Sheehan. If you want a better America, you're going to have to make it happen with action; not words alone. You have to openly protest and in large numbers. You have to march on Washington.

You need a Revolution - but not one of hatred and violence; you only have to look at how a testosterone-fueled mindset worked for Irish, to see it didn't get better for them until they stopped fighting amongst themselves, eh?

If a million people were to march on Washington in a peaceful demonstration, bypassing Media spin by way of more honest Tweets, undercutting any FOX News related distortion, I think that would be a nice start.

It didn't hurt the Civil Right Movement. :)

Hi Roger.

Regarding commenters questioning my comments on Obama receiving money from BP:

Brenda: That would be the McCain/Palin campaign getting supported by an organization funded by BP. What Obama/Biden received was donations from BP employees. Not the same. Not even close.

and

Coop: Please point us to your data for the BP contributions to Obama's campaign...Obama received a grand total of $71,051. All of it from BP's EMPLOYEES. none from the company itself or their PACs.

Coop, I Googled it. (Yes, I do that too). Googling "BP donations to Obama campaign" yeilds this from Politico at the top:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html

During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.

PAC and individual. Obama top recipient. There it is. Did Politico get that wrong?

My point wasn't that Obama is particulaly culpable in taking that money. I think all of the politicians at that level take oil money. My point was to rebut the seeming implication in these discussions that Republicans only are in the pocket of Big Oil.

Ebert: Did they separate "BP PAC" and "individual?"

"Why does BP enjoy such a peculiar immunity"

Because it's largely our own fault, as Americans.

We are the ones who consume most of the oil in the world. We buy more of it, create much of the demand for it, and raise the price for it. We are the ones who get angry if anyone proposes higher taxes on it.

It wouldn't be economical to drill this deeply if we Americans didn't so much enjoy our SUVs and energy-wasting lives.

BP was largely unlucky. So maybe they were 2-5x more negligent than a normal drilling platform...this simply means that if BP weren't around, some other platform would have had the same accident sometime soon.

Remember, every time you buy gas, you're giving BP money (it does not matter one bit whether the station is called "BP" or not).

As I read the comments, I think that some are conflating two unrelated issues and then drawing wrong conclusions. Two examples:

1. Conflating the issue of a) environmentalists pushing drilling out offshore into risky depths that are hard to seal and b) BP using shoddy parts and bad safety practices. Not the same thing.

Brenda C: I still haven't figured out why it is the fault of environmentalists that BP and others have been allowed to drill in areas for which they don't have the proper safety technology -- or, as it turns out, didn't use the technology they had access to.

It's not the fault of environmentalists that BP didn't have / use the proper safety technology. That's BPs fault. That's the regulators fault.

It has, on the other hand, been suggested that an unintended consequence of environmentalist actions to push rigs further and further offshore (and not on land like in ANWR) is that we are now drilling miles deep and have a significant problem capping a leak in less than 90 days at that depth. I still think that is a sensible point. NIMBY pushed us to risky.

Conflating two issues.

2) Conflating the issue of a) having a qualm with the President asking for the $20B fund and b) defending BP.

Congressman Barton's idiotic apology aside, who is defending BP? Really, who?

I think I remember Roger tweeting that the oil spill united left and right in hating BP. Something like that. I think that's true. In all of my hallway conversations with coworkers, I haven't encountered anyone defending BP. Who could?

Having a qualm about the way the $20B fund was aquired is a different issue. It's about limits on power in our own government, not about defending BP. Isn't that obvious?

A question:

If: our President can just call a privately owned corporation and "inform them" that they will surrender a significant amount of their earnings into a fund distributed by an appointed agent of the President, without the due process of a court order or Congressional law...

Then: how is that substantively different from Hugo Chavez in Venezuala unilateraly nationalizing the 5 US-owned oil rigs there?

It seems extra-legal. It seems like nationalizing an industry. Granted, it's for a good cause. But once you allow that power to be excercised, what stops it from being used for a bad reason.

The qualm with the $20B fund was about Constitutional limits on government power, not about defending BP. Conflating two issues.

I see several bright commenters here think that boycotting gas stations named "BP" is worthwhile. Their heart is in the right place but they haven't thought this through.

Names on gas stations are mere marketing. They are largely owned by independent owners in a cutthroat low profit business. They buy their gas from wherever they can get it cheapest. The name on the station is mere franchise marketing. It's not all that profitable to sell franchise marketing and BP was in the process of leaving this business anyway.

When you buy gas from ANYWHERE, you are buying from BP.

Even if you find some station that pledges to never buy from BP, you are still helping BP every time you buy gas--buying gas raises demand and increases BP's profits.

When you buy gas from ANYWHERE, you are buying from BP.

The only effective boycott is one where you buy less gas.

Last week, I streamed the documentary "Crude" on Netflix. It's about Chevron -- you mention it used to be part of the trust that also split off into the entity that would become BP -- and how they've raped the Ecuadoran rain forest and its people. They've been in court for more than a decade, and there may be another decade before the case is decided.

It made me mad. How many movies do we need? "Sicko" about health insurance companies. "Maxed Out" about credit card companies. "Food Inc." about the food industry. "Crude" about the oil industry. All very good movies. But strip away the details and they're all the same movie about the same thing:

Money.

Money doesn't care about people. Money cares only about the increased accumulation of itself. It is often given free reign and has the power to hurt people very badly. And if it hurts people, it can throw more of itself at lawyers until the problem ("problem" is money-jargon for "people") is bankrupted into silence. Then money changes its corporate logo, puts out an ad to convince us that it's not that thing that hurt all those people, and then it starts all over again.

This stuff is crazy, right? Watching these documentaries, it's clear the perpetrators aren't working very hard to hide what they do, but why would they? Free-market fundamentalists -- I call them that because of their cult-like worship of corporations -- pummel us with talking points and convince a frighteningly large number of us that HMOs should have the right to deny us coverage because we had a hangnail in junior high school, that the Dow Jones is more important to protect than the freakin' Gulf of Mexico, that soft drink companies should continue to pour diabetes down the throats of poor people because government subsidies make Pepsi a quarter the price of orange juice.

And so on, and so on. I've got a million of these.

What's wrong with these "patriotic" Americans, protecting corporate power at the expense of the country? The neocon lunatics yell at us to stop complaining about the tree that destroyed our house, but they live in the same house! "No sir, we should pay YOU for the tree in our yards because your tree-growing is too important to our neighborhood. If you're forced to accept responsibility, you might have to leave, and then we'd all have houses we can still live in, but none of your trees!"

The way you describe BP at the start of this essay makes them sound like those people killing dolphins in "The Cove." Worse, actually. BP must be killing exponentially more wildlife. I'm sure there's gonna be a documentary about the BP disaster. And I'm sure it'll win an Oscar. And we'll all feel so much better that we're aware of what's going on. But this crap isn't gonna change, is it?

Well done. To deny much of what you're saying would be to deny reality itself. Sadly, that's the new politics, a kind of weird Post-Modern Conservatism that makes up its own facts, terms, and definitions as it goes along.

Awareness of reality begins with pieces like this.

We are all to blame, of course, partially. We all have cars and we all drive them. Our society is structured that way and as individuals we have little choice. But if western civilization is to have a chance it has to begin with awareness of what's going on. We can't stop driving, but maybe we could drive less, and demand more, much more, accountability from our corporations. If we do so, it might someday soon be more profitable for them to find new sources of energy than to, literally, squeeze the earth for more oil until it's all gone.

An excellent place to start would be the following statement, which should be obvious: Oil is, by definition, a finite resource. And another: No corporation, of any kind, can survive when it runs out. Especially not an oil company.

So if a rational corporation wished to protect its profits, shouldn't it be finding something else? Soon?

-The Albany Exile
http://albanyexile.blogspot.com/

@ Ursula on July 26, 2010 8:01 AM

As a European, I do not understand this great divide between us and Americans. Very generally speaking, Europeans are afraid of corporations but trust (to some extent) their governments. Americans are deathly afraid of their government, but trust in the corporations, because “the market will regulate itself”.

I'll take a stab at this one, from the point of view of a conservative American.

On Corporations:

Corporations are a net plus for America. They provide a lot of us our jobs. Our livelihoods. Our insurance. Etc. They have played a pivotal role in the existence of the middle class, of which I am a part.

I work for a US based Fortune 100 manufacturing corporation, with a global reach. I do not fear my employer. I am grateful for my employer. I am grateful for the jobs that it has provided for thousands and thousands of my neighbors / families in our region for decades - allowing a strong middle class life for us. In that regard, my employer - a large corporation - is a good citizen.

My company by and large follows the rules and regulations as far as I know, contributes significantly to the community through taxes and donations, and provides good jobs. Why would I fear it. My hope is that it survives and thrives and continues doing what it does. A net plus.

On Government:

Mistrust of our Federal government is built into our founding. The sovereign states saw a benefit to a unifying government, yet fenced it in with the first 10 amendments to the Constitution - the Bill of Rights. Each is a bright shiny fence around the government stating what it shall not do.

Yes, government is us. We elect our officials. yet we still feel somewhat powerless in the face of as large an entity as the federal government has become. Government has power to tax, to incarcerate, to take property that corporations do not.

Both are a net plus. Both need to be continually watched against abuses.

Make sense?

Hi Roger,

I had the good fortune to be in the Gulf area last week on business. In New Orleans and quite a way inland.

Click on my name for a featured gallery on my photosite of the French Quarter and some of the waterways.

I asked someone well inland if the oil spill was affecting them there. He said yes. Not directly, but because lots of new folks were rapidly moving into his town. People who were abandoning the coast - not believing that it would rebound. People who were now bringing city lifestyle to them in the country. Interesting, I thought.

I've scrolled and scrolled but I can't find my comment. Either you're getting a buttload of comments, or I've been blocked somehow? Of course, I may have been saved from the "stupid-alert" censor, since, for the life of me, I can't remember what my comment was, but I thought it was funny at the time and could've been of use to your readers. Maybe. I've been known to be wrong AND stupid from time to time.
Okay to weigh in now? I'm fascinated by scrolling over the BP symbol.

Randy Masters said:

//How does that substantially differ from Hugo Chavez nationalizing US owned oil rigs in Venezuala last week?//

It differs by about ninety-two millions gallons of spilled oil.

Ebert: The part of the meme about Cheney is correct, right?

It is not. It is Bush-hating, Cheney-is-Darth-Vader leftist spin. Prove otherwise.

Ebert: http://j.mp/dBnJm1

It was in the zeitgeist of the seventies to think that the so-called "American Empire" was, like Rome a couple of millenniums ago, crumbing to an inglorious end. I think this concept could well stand to be re-examined with a fresh eye today.

You wrote :

"How it is axiomatically understood that their (BP's or any multinational corporation's) interests come before those of people or even their governments? Why must they be defended against reform? How do they recruit their friends in politics and reward them? How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?"

I agree and feel it is my duty to point out that you're basically asking some of the very same question that motivated Karl Marx to travel all over the map to investigate tzarism's and capitalism's inhumane and deadly stranglehold on the unwashed masses. One step removed, however. This is a new millennium, after all.

I myself was gobsmacked when I saw the very bozos who had most to gain by the Medicare reform actively demonstrate against it. Actually, I was more than gobsmacked. I think it punched a dirty little hole in my soul.

WTF? How can you explain this aberrant behavior?

My most comforting answer is this : It's a new kind of mental disease that could easily be compared to the Stockholm Syndrome. Let's call it the Corpslave syndrome, or better yet, the Capitalbitch Syndrome, and make it a political offshoot of masochism just for fun.

But of course, a syndrome can be addressed, cured.

My other, more serious answer is more frightening. But first let me posit to you that America, let's just say since 1776, has never been wholly part of Western civilization. By assimilating people and customs from all over, by its very isolation on a great continent, by the insularity of its safe shores; it strove to be not a country but a civilization of its own. It might be said to have integrated this goal as a tacit part of its "Manifest Destiny", if you will.

Now the continent is full. Is it any wonder that the instrument of the American economy's downfall has been real estate? Property?

When the Roman empire was beginning to crumble, there was a recurrent theme that could be found in many writings and even on funeral monuments that could be resumed as follows : "Our world is old". This was a time when the Praetorian Guard, some kind of Roman version of Haliburton who managed to establish themselves as the emperor's Schutzstaffel, garnered so much power that they eventually could and DID make or break the emperor.

To me, the Palins, the Limbaugh, the Becks, the tea partiers and all those who militate against their own good "on principle" are symptoms of a civilization crumbling in on itself. They are enabling America's Praetorian Guards. They are the enablers of a toxic and powerful minority who will never again believe in their government, and therefore unfortunately wind up not believing in themselves as a people, all the way to ruin.

Their leitmotiv cannot be "Our world is old".

It could however be : "We were not socialists!"

Louisiana, welcome to Bhopal.

And the oil is still leaking.

BP was found with 621 violations of safety at its Texas City plant. There have been three accidents there and thousands of safety violations.

BP's reaction? Fire some people. Do nothing.

BP had a rig in the Mediterranean nearly blow up, which would release millions of gallons into the Sea.

BP's reaction? Do nothing.

BP arranges for the release of a Libyan terrorist as part of a deal to drill in Libya. This terrorist blew up Pan Am 105, killing hundreds. He had terminal prostate cancer but is still alive and is well living in Libya.

BP does nothing.

BP is bashed by the EPA for poor safety three years in a row.

BP fires people but changes nothing.

BP's rig breaks in the Gulf and creates the greatest environmental disaster in American history. BP loses half its value - and thus affects the pensions British retirees invested in.

BP's relief efforts succeed after 86 days of leaking oil.

BP provides no compensation and changes nothing. Their stock prices goes down, and then goes up.

Now BP is firing its CEO. Again. It's been approved to drill offshore in Greenland and also through the glaciers. Their reasoning? Think of yourself! Your ecosystem will be destroyed and the sea will rise, the Gulf Stream will freeze over and Britain will get colder, but you'll be rich!

I'm worried. Very. Very. Worried. Greenland? Please.

Its interesting to note that the other huge environmental disaster (maybe still the worst) The Dust Bowl was partially caused by the English too. Rich English bought huge tracts of land in the American West and when the cattle ranches they put there didn't make money they subdivided the land and sold it off to farmers who ploughed under the natural grasses which caused the land to start blowing away. The American Railroads then convinced the US government to settle the West by giving away Sections of land. They even gave free travel to people on their way West. So the English and the large US corporations of the 19th century were the first combination of government and big business to cause an environmentl disaster.

A great outline of what is going on with BP and ultimately what is happening with all corporations. You keep asking what their protective shield is? Well it's the fact that they're legally classed as persons. That is when it suits them of course. Since they are classed as persons, legal fictions they can be hurt, upset, offended just like us living, breathing human beings. The thing is we're expected to take responsibility for our actions they just withdraw. The difference is they are immortal, disgustingly wealthy, of no nationality, not limited by borders or law. We have to recognise and fight for them to be classed as what they are collections of individual people who should be held criminally culpable for what their corporation does. I think we might find people opting for jobs where they're not fouling the planet or destroying lives.

We also have persons, legal fictions, we just don't know it. We have corporate names we just never use them knowingly but we do use them every single day. That's one things the lawyers are not telling us. Check out two pieces of mind blowing video a documentary called 'The Corporation' and this little lecture called 'Bursting the Bubbles of Government Deception' http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7040453665540929835#

Fight the good fight brothers and sisters

@Phill Powell

I also thought about that memorable moment in the movie while reading this entry.

And my mind went to this as the counterpoint.

"We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more."

- From Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors"

Mr. Ebert: Gaaaad I thought I was THE ONLY ONE who felt the way you do. I'm so glad that you had the ability to write it so well!!

I will now subscribe to your blog ... not that I thought you only had opinions about movie ... but I just didn't know you published them.

I submitted this post yesterday. Either you missed it or you censored it, so I thought I'd try it again.

I was with you for the first couple of paragraphs. You lost me when you blamed neocons and fox news.

Here is an interesting exercise: Wherever your original post says "neocons" or "fox news" substitute "bogeyman", or "commies" (if you miss the red scare), or "Jews" or some other scapegoat du jour. This exercise exposes the nonsense of the oversimplification blame-game.

Here is another fun exercise. Look at Raymond Ogilvie's post July 26, 2010 8:26 AM:

Sometimes, I really feel that neocons simply want to do as much harm to others as humanly possible. And not for money or self-interest, but simply because they like it when people are harmed. If the environment was destroyed and it meant the extinction of the human race, they would laugh with delight. That's just the kind of sadistic people they are.

Sadly, James isn't trying to be satirical. Substitue "neocons" with "Muslims" or "African-Americans" or "albinos" and the absurdity of Ogilivie's post becomes even more obvious. He actually thinks people who disagree with him politically are evil.

Roger, your outrage over the disaster in the gulf is justified and sincere. Your blame of "neocons" is conspiracy theory twaddle.

Ebert: But bogeymen, Muslims, Commies, African-Americans, Jews or albinos were not running the Bush administration.

Mr. Ebert, I humbly suggest you peruse again the blog entry by Paul on July 26, 2010 4:05 PM regarding the concept of corporations. He makes the points I tried to make, but more clearly and accessibly.

So, with apologies to Shakespeare, do we "kill all the corporations"? In this modern world, we cannot, because every step we make, every breath we take, every blog we make, ultimately depends upon a corporation. How did Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon peoples ever survive without one?

If we must live with these necessary, evil hydras, can we then make them more "morally responsible" and charitable? Yes, if it is profitable. To paraphrase Edward Norton's Bruce Banner in "The Incredible Hulk", we may not be able to control corporations, but we might be able to aim them at worthy targets.

Great example about standard oil. My father often uses that as an example of how things used to be different too. Politicians today can't even imagine doing a thing like that.

For those who don't get it - it's not about breaking up BP specifically, it's about having politicians that are strong enough, that have enough guts and integrity, to stand up to the corporations and prevent them from doing harm. How? Somehow! Some clever, good way that doesn't destroy them but forces them to be good puppies.

Corporations have no mechanism to do that on their own. With no control the corporations will do whatever horrendous thing there is in order to make more money. They are not human beings, they haven't got compassion or morals.

The politicians should have that. The politicians should realize what rules should be in place, what could be a problem, what regulations must be put in place. And they should enforce them without corruption. It's asking a lot of the leaders, yes, but they are supposed to be the best among us.

Even on this blog-site, there's an advert running about "UPS's government bail-out." Nobody realizes FedEx wouldn't exist if it weren't for government consideration an ex-Air Force retiree got from his cronies in Reagan's Washington.

Yet, FedEx had the nerve to lay my entire department off when they didn't profit during a quarter in 2009. Not a loss, mind. They didn't profit, so they laid off thousands.

Corporations are evil, and they are like veins, running this entire country. Once a blood system turns evil, the organism is evil.

I totally agree with Phill Powell. It is exactly like Arthur Jensen says in"Network".

Want to disprove Republican economic ideology? Go visit a BP gas station.

Why isn't it empty? Why hasn't it been boycotted? Everyone agrees that they hate BP, on both the left and right. So if Friedman's theory about "the market" regulating itself through consumer action is true, BP gas stations should be sitting empty.

That's not happening, because Friedman was wrong. The consumer turns off most of his brain when he shops for commodities. He just looks for the lowest price, politics be damned. That's why people can go to town hall meetings and scream about outsourcing jobs, then go to Wal-Mart and load up on merchandise made in China.

Every car that pulls into a BP gas station proves that Friedman was wrong. Republicans are wrong. Markets do NOT regulate themselves through consumer action. The only way to keep these mega-corporate beasts under control is through government action.

People like Randy Masters complain that the government dropped the ball on this one, but that doesn't mean we should abandon the approach entirely. It just means we should demand that our government actually start regulating industry strictly, and ignore the deregulation talk from Friedman-worshippers. Mr. Masters himself probably would have given you an earful about that one day BEFORE this spill. Now, of course, he can pretend that he supported these regulations all along.

Randy: PAC and individual. Obama top recipient. There it is. Did Politico get that wrong?

You and Politico are incorrect, your Google is broken. Obama did not accept ANY BP PAC money so stop spreading your falsehoods.

Politifact:

More of BP's money has been heading to the campaigns of Republicans than Democrats. And as an industry, about three quarters of the oil and gas money has gone to Republicans since 1990, the Center on Responsive Politics noted. That disparity held true in the 2008 presidential campaign, as McCain and his running-mate Palin accepted $2.4 million in contributions from the oil industry, more than double the nearly $900,000 that went to Obama.

But curiously, when you look at BP in particular, Obama took the lion's share.

During the 2008 election cycle, Obama was the largest recipient of BP's largess; collecting $71,051 from BP employees (remember, Obama did not take any PAC money). By comparison, McCain, got $36,649 from BP. So Obama held a sizable edge in contributions from BP, even though in general BP sent more money to Republican candidates than Democrats that election cycle.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/may/24/bp-liked-obama-oil-stained-sarah-palins-hands-too/

Why does a fear of government supersede a fear of corporations?

Government's role is to protect a nation. That's the entirety of a nation, including the weakest and poorest citizens. Corporation's role is to maximize profits for investors. Investors are under no obligation to use their profits for the betterment of anyone but themselves. A CEO has no accountability beyond his boardroom, but he can affect millions of lives. At least, a politician has to answer, eventually, to a majority for his or her decisions.

Government becomes a threat when it intrudes upon its citizens social and belief structure. When it, say, forces children to recite oaths of loyalty, or uses the media to deflect a truthful discussion of its issues. (Or, similarly, is caught in the hamster-wheel of defending itself against baseless arguments posed by a media that is, itself, a corporation with only corporate interests as its guide.) When a government dictates who should enjoy the benefits of its institutions over whom and whoever else that is expendable, that government is a threat. But, wait, only tyrannical governments do those things. Right? Unless, of course, some corporo-lobbyist system is at work, corrupting an otherwise non-tyrannical government. See? It comes down to the corporation, even in that instance. A government that imposes strictures upon corporations isn't a threat to anything. You want to play, you've got to have rules to follow.

Your fear of government and my fear of corporations seems to be, when you get down to it, the same fear. Yet, to me, you're targeting the wrong culprit, if you excuse the latter and deflect all of your outrage onto the former. All of the arguments in favor of change seem to demand a stronger government - one independent of strong influence on the part of any, single business motive - to serve as a check against corporations. The Reagan years are over. The truth has been exposed. The bastards have licked that bone clean of its meat. It's time they were all tarred and feathered.

I haven't been following this as closely as I perhaps should be the last couple of weeks, but before that I was pretty up on it, and I'm not sure what you mean by "immunity". The last I heard BP was going to be paying for the entire cleanup as well as lost wages, a cost that is literally incalculable since the clean up is not done yet nor will be for years and, therefore, no one knows how long people will be out of work. I did however read that it would easily be in the 100 of billions of dollars area, a sum that could conceivably bankrupt the company, which if that were to happen would of course mean that payments for clean up and lost wages would cease, and additionally thousands more people would be put out of work. The blow to Britain's economy would be severe, and, considering the economy is fragile already, could easily cause another recession in Britain, which would likely drag the rest of Europe with it, and then, it follows, the United States as well. So if anyone in Washington or other halls of power is treating BP with kid gloves, I would assume it is with an eye to preventing that scenario from unfolding. BP should be required to pay for its own mess, but it's in everybody's interest for the company to stay in business.

I used to work for a major corporation. When I became an employee, I had to sign a statement of ethics, in effect agreeing to uphold corporate ethics policies. At every corporate meeting I attended, the ethics policy was brought forefront by the CEO as a shining example of how we conducted our business.

Four years later, the CEO, CFO and Corporate Head Attorney were all gone, the Company stock fell from 90 dollars to 3 dollars (costing me nearly all of my 401K value because most of it was in stock that I could not sell because it was blocked by the company), and various employees were in prison.

What caused all this? The company was creating profits on the books (by backroom deals) that did not exist. The very people who openly fired underlings for ethics violations, the self righteous of the greedy, were in no way coming close to living up to their own ethics policy.

I learned the hard way what a joke corporate ethics really are. They give lip service to the idea as CYA, but in their heart, they really don't care about anything except money. The thousands of employees who lost their jobs, homes, and retirement funds are still feeling the repercussions of their greed.

They were so greedy; they ran the entire company into the ground. Maybe that is what will happen to BP.

Actually, if your neighbor's tree falls in your yard, you're responsible for its removal unless you can prove they were negligent. If the tree was blown over in a storm, too bad...act of god and you're responsible. Take my word for it, this just happened to us.

Ebert: Ummm. Maybe, but I feel responsible. I like my neighbor.

To M.A. Maher

I turn 23 in a couple weeks. I feel the same way you do. You are not alone.

I am hoping to join Americorps sometime later this year, after I finish my summer job. Maybe you should look into it. They have a lot of good programs in support of literacy, poverty relief, disaster response, and education.

You said, "All of my purchases, my wants, and dreams are just things to keep me complacent while the upper crust stays in control." The fact that you can express this thought means that you are still free. Some mechanism of control has failed to touch you. Exploit that failure. Your purchases and wants belong to the mechanism, but your dreams belong to no one else.

And in fact, you can take your "wants" back from them, too. But it's difficult.

By legal design, the corporation is a psychopath structured to look out only for the benefits of itself and its shareholders. Under the Business Judgment Rule, a corporation's board of directors and management have a fiduciary obligation to act only in the manner that best serves the interests of the corporation and its shareholders. There are two methods available to align the the corporation's interests with the interests of the public in general. The first is for the government to punish the corporation for actions that are taken against the public's interest. The second is for the individual customer or client to boycott the corporation. The first method often is tempered by special interests and the government's reluctance to jeopardize the jobs of its constituents. The seconf method generally is not subject to temperance as exercised by a typical individual. I for one take peace in my decision to never purchase another $1 of gasoline from BP or any successor to BP.

Here's a website for the book "Energy Victory:winning the war on terror by breaking free of oil": well, the Articles section (there's also video links in the Talks section, and Presentation charts, the names of the House and Senate bills):

This is where I've gotten all of my goings-on about flex-fuel vehicles, Saudi corruption in our media, government, global warming etc. One reason I didn't cite the book was I didn't want to engage in ad hominem attacks indirectly directed at me through the source of my information. You know how people are; they want to undermine one's efforts so as to appear like god because of their inadequacies.

Articles section:

http://energyvictory.net/energy_victory_links.htm

One of the first things you'll notice is this article titled:

"Leaders of All major US Jewish organizations endorse Open Fuel Standards bill"

A letter proposing to discuss with the Senate Majority leader Reid and Minority leader McConnell the inadequacies of the new energy bill in the senate and show support for a flex-fuel mandate that includes methanol operation.

The Letter
http://energyvictory.net/images/Reid_and_McConnell_letter_on_OFS.pdf

Also a July 2, 2010 column written by the author, Robert Zubrin, in the Washington Times:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/2/open-standards-for-auto-fuel/

It begins:

Ladies and gentlemen of the left and the right: Let's be realistic. There is no chance whatsoever that the U.S. political system will either: A) Pass carbon or gas taxes sufficiently punitive to compel Americans to curtail their driving substantially, or B) Support rapid expansion of offshore drilling for the foreseeable future.

Therefore, if neither conservation nor production is in the cards, how can we hope to deal with our nation's dangerous and ever-growing dependence on foreign oil?

Here's my answer: We need to cure our cars of their oil addiction. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in ourselves, but in our cars; we are made underlings.

Hi,

I was curious about Wolfowitz's words, so went and did a little snooping. I believe you are referring to a NYRB review when you say he wrote this, as I determined from your Twitter feed?

That review in turn seems to refer to a Guardian article of some years back (http://goo.gl/feq3), which the paper has since admitted was a mistake and removed from its site (http://goo.gl/3baZ):

"A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that."

I'm not too eager to defend Paul Wolfowitz, but I'd love to know if he actually wrote or said this!

Roger, one reason I stopped reading science fiction was the depressing realization that there is virtually no obscenity being committed by corporations today that writers like Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth weren't warning about in detail 50 years ago...

The Hollow Men Who Rule Us: http://bit.ly/cHau8y

The Day the Icicle Works Closed: http://bit.ly/c69sLU

I guess I'm living up to my stereotype of indian giving as I said I wasn't going to comment anymore, but then I cried for about 30 minutes and thought "ok, I better not."

Thank You! We need to stop worshipping the creations of our own hands, which now are threatening our very existence. Do corporations serve us, or do we serve them? Corporations are NOT PEOPLE and their sole purpose is to LIMIT LIABILITY! NO ACT OF CONGRESS OR SUPREME COURT RULING can grant a corporation a right to life like that stolen from our son when the Dupont/Remco/Whitman/Pepsi chrome-plating plant killed him & poisoned thousands of others in Willits, Calif.!! Beware of #Chromium--It's everywhere--in the #dispersants in the Gulf, in cement, in leather tanning, ... but who has heard of it? (besides Erin Brockovich)

I'm working on not making this blog a Need need, but at the same time, unlike its espoused ill-gotten reputation, I enjoy the use of computers--even computer programs--as a tool to help function in society.

(typo)
I'm working on not making this blog a Need need, but at the same time, unaccepting of its espoused ill-gotten reputation, I enjoy the use of computers--even computer programs--as a tool to help function in society.

Oddly enough, on the news yesterday they were saying BP would still have $4 billion in profits despite this boondoggle. This morning, announcments that BP is now in the red.

It made me wonder, if BP folds like orgiami, does that mean that other oil companies will become more responsible? Or will they just go further to hide any shortcuts?

Hi Roger.

Yes, I've read these articles about Cheney before.

First, this particular article is not complete. It tries to imply that the US is the only country to not require the acoustical switch. I don't believe that is accurate.

Second, Nick already explained above that it was not a factor in this specific disaster. So, that point is moot.

Third, regarding this from the article:

Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration.

If they were "secret" meetings, how does the author know what Cheney did or did not allow in in there.

You guys just will not give up on hating Dick Cheney, a fine public servant with many many years of service to the United States.

I say, thank you Dick Cheney for your service to our country in a difficult time.

Your blogs and responses to your comment all go around the central issue.

For some reason, in 1980, the man who refused to go to Martin Luther King Jr's funeral ascended office and ever since both parties lost a good portion of the intelligence and integrity that once was there. In fact, you could remove every political blog you ever wrote and replace it with this and no one would be the wiser. Instead of the tough FDR, we got Clinton, who spent more time on personal matters then doing what his party traditionally did. Every Republican who comments here should be horrified at the con-men who stole their party.

A world in which the Republican Party went from respecting Robert Taft to

P.S.

I have the book with me that will confirm the fact about Mr. Reagan.

P.P.S. If we can ever bring people back to life, someone needs to videotape Taft's reaction to what his party has become.

For any conservative wishing to go back to their roots, please pick up "The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft." I am in the middle of it and it is a great read.

My dear friend,

I am Bolivian. In the 1930's Standard Oil generated an international conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia to increase their profin margin a 5 to 10% in the exploit of oil resources in Chaco, a former region of a my country. There was a crude and savage war, my great-grandfather was a young lieutenant who swore to only back down with a paraguayan rifle on his back--he eventually did when he reached Asuncion. We won the war. However, the international community, the U.S. and most latin american countries agreed to let Argentina intervene in the peace negotiations. Paraguay received about 1/4 of our territory, Argentina about 1/5 their government heavily supported by Standard Oil.

Now we have expelled USAID, the former American ambassador and are held in the international courts as a rouge state. Is that being socialist?

My regards,

Fred Arinez

A great piece from a great man. BP isn't held accountable for its actions because its corporate charter grants it limited liability. BP has used its corporate privileges as a license to kill.

Corporate charter laws require corporations to serve the public interest. In the past, corporations have had their charters revoked for violating the law.

The Gulf death gusher is far from BP's first offense. BP is a serial corporate offender, leaving a trail of dead workers and poisoned landscapes. The only way to end BP's spree of lawlessness and destruction is to revoke its corporate charter, which is located in Delaware.

Take action to urge Delaware's elected officials to revoke BP's corporate charter: http://bit.ly/revokeBP

If any corporation (for instance a bank) is "too big too fail" because it would threaten the very existence of the financial system in the US then doesn't it by definition qualify to be broken up via anti-trust legislation? Instead I'm pretty certain that a number of small banks have been allowed to go under this last couple years while the very biggest were merely merged together with the help of the government. Doesn't that make them even too bigger to fail? I would also assume if you left one of the large banks on a salary of many millions to work at the US Treasury for a civil servant's salary then you are either:

a. A criminal.
b. A complete idiot and were fired.

Not an oil company I realize but the principal is the same. As near as I can tell both parties (you let the Democrats off too easy in these matters) are essentially paid for along with the applicable oversight agency.

Roger, your anecdote has one small flaw. BP is not the property owner - they are the lessee. If that tree blew over onto your house, you'd sue both the lessee and the property owner for damages and would ulimately collect from one or both of the guilty parties.

While I am not condoning BP here - they should pay dearly, the US Government's inaction BEFORE and AFTER the spill (refusing help from a number of foreign countries on Day 3) makes them both liable for the damage that occurred in the 90+ days that preceded the spill.

If the property owner didn't have the capability to solve the problems created by the lessee or insure any problems created by the lessee, then the property owner should not have allowed the lessee to lease the property in the first place.

Would you lease your house to someone and let your property insurance lapse while they lived there? I hope not. Especially if you knew the lessee planned on planting trees that were likely to topple over onto your neighbor's house.

The government can try and plead ignorance and/or blame BP - but they are both clearly to blame for this disaster.

boat hits capped oil well... wonder who'll claim this one...

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/latest/99318059.html

Randy Masters: I was with you on a lot of points until you thought that President Obama's procurement of $20 Billion implies that he will come for our money next. What? I prefer a traditional interpretation of Presidential power. As in: I hate that Presidents are now leaders of parties and thus have dynamic influence over the legislative branch. I think Presidents should enforce the laws, not influence their passage. One of the President's ORIGINAL powers is Head of State. In a globalized economy where companies are often more powerful than nations and operate an international theater I consider it the President's duty to negotiate with BP about a disaster they caused. It was absolutely appropriate and necessary. I think you are completely wrong in condemning it.

Also, people-that-comment, who in the hell are all these Republican BP defenders? I could only find like five. There's even a few DEMOCRATS defending them, but not many. Almost everyone thinks BP should pay. Corruption is not limited to a single party, so stop acting like it is. Turning this into a party issue is severely stupid. WE ALL ALREADY AGREE. I hate BOTH parties and for ONCE, we all agree on an issue and you're fighting anyway. I swear, people only agree on politics so they can squabble over details.

It's astounding to consider that there's anyone arguing, presumably with a straight face, that BP was only drilling in the gulf "because we prevented them from drilling in Alaska". Pardon my french, but ... what the FUCK? Is there anyone out there actually so insipid as to believe this? That, in and of itself, is a sobering thought: how on this or any other planet* does their drilling in one location preclude them from drilling in another?

*BP would be drilling on Mars if there was a profit in it. Not that that is, in and of itself, a bad thing.

The point I heard was that having the fines decideed in a court of law as opposed to through a judicial or legislative process would preserve the rule of law.

I think that the fine was appropriate but I also understand why there should be concern about popularlly elected institutions leveling fees on foreign corporations.

With the exception of Rand Paul I haven't heard anyone not even Bill Cunningham, the guy who replaced Drudge on Sunday nights, express what I would consider true sympathy for BP. There's just disagreement as to what is the best way to make them pay.

Sam E.

Excellent post even by your standards. Mr. Dark gives the reason for our acquiescence: we have been sold the notion that we must permit corporate oligarchy in order to have a system where a man can get rich reviewing crummy movies on TV.
P.S. Dark's post on his dog's death is the best thing he ever wrote,which is saying something.

I am one of those crazy people who has been against off-shore drilling and nuclear energy plants for years. When people were protesting against General Motors taking back the EV-1 and crushing them, I bought an old electric vehicle--without any tax credits. There's no big company paying lobbyists to give owners like myself tax credits. And it isn't easy owning such a car, but doing the right thing usually isn't easy.

In our search for energy, we have looked for easy solutions without thinking of the consequences. We want to take short cuts, even if it comes with risks.

Historically, the American and European companies have felled many trees in the yards of other people and attempted, many times successfully, to not pay for the damage. How odd it is that in a time when the world is made smaller by electronic communication and air travel, that so many remain driven by self-interest remaining blind to the interdependency all people have on this planet with each other.

Although BP is about oil, this disaster reminds me of Enron. If you saw the documentary, "The Smartest Guys in the Room," you'll probably remember, particularly if you're from California, how Enron created the energy crisis in California. It wasn't just that they strategically plotted to do so, but how they seemed to delight in the suffering they caused. Crisis in California seemed far away from those people at Enron, as if we weren't part of the same country or continent.

I wonder if the executives at BP and if the lawmakers they rubbed shoulders with also made homey comments about how Grandma Millie might have to do without her beach vacation after a little oil spill?

The oil spill here, the blood spilt in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq...These are environmental and human disasters. And in terms of global community, to what extent has the image of the Persians and Arabs been distorted to conform with the American need for oil? Isn't that a disaster as well?

Perhaps BP enjoys an immunity because we've already designated enemies and BP is a company that is too much like ourselves and too much a part of the political machinery.

When I think of this BP disaster, I think of dolphins, sea turtles and birds dying. Mostly I think of the dolphins, no longer laughing or smiling because of what humans have carelessly done to their home, their play yard.

As for the analogy of a tree falling, there was negligence in BP's tree care or there was a lack of care which could be defined a negligence.

Either way, more than just Aunt Millies hoping for a beach vacation suffered and will suffer for some time to come.

Roger, you're beginning to come around. The neo-libs and neo-cons control both major parties in our country, and have since the Reagan administration. On the important issues, Republicans and Democrats are far more similar than they are different.

The health care reform bill the current administration is so proud of amounts to not much more than a giant subsidy to get huge corporations another 20 million paying customers.

Until Americans stop voting against our own interests, we're going to be stuck with just a few principled members of congress (Kucinich, Sanders, and um... Bueller? Bueller?)

But what the hell do I know? I keep voting for Ralph Nader.

An engaging, insightful, thoroughly depressing post. Why so many people are inexplicably jumping to BP's defense I think must have some connection to why they're tearing apart Obama even when he's acting in their best interests (they're crazy). Honestly, what stake do you or I or anyone we know have in BP's success? Obama's a "socialist" for "forcing" them to pay for their reparations. Does anyone truly believe that they shouldn't? And if he did force them (which he didn't), why do you care? Personally, if Obama were to dissolve BP from the inside-out and never allow them to work in the business again I'd throw a f*cking party.

I don't understand the people who say "Yes, it's very tragic, but these things happen." Um, no they don't. This is the biggest man-made environmental catastrophe to ever happen and people shrug it off like all it means is a little less tanning time on the Gulf Coast beaches. This is a world-wide disaster, a tragedy of epic proportions, and it's one that could have been easily prevented. BP, in the past three years, has had more egregious safety violations than any other oil company COMBINED, yet so many people seem to attribute the spill to just plain ol' bad luck. Wake up.

I make no claims to be a genius or an expert of any kind, but I know bullsh*t when I smell it. Hell, even BP knows they're full of sh*t; why else would they be pouring millions into a silly marketing campaign when they could be spending the same money on cleanup efforts? Don't give BP so much credit - they wouldn't give it to us.

Drudge is reporting BP losses at $20 billion (US), with the cleanup expected to reach $40 billion for the company. There are reports the company will exercise $10 billion in tax credits as permitted by the IRS, but some of those tax revenues are based on profits, which a company in the red cannot claim if there is no profit to tax. This assumes that the government does not pressure BP to back away from the tax credit offset, a politically popular move.
No one has benefited from the spill; BP is costing in massive losses, has plunged into the red, jettisoned its CEO, its reputation permanently tarnished and may head into bankruptcy. Adding into this the human and environmental cost, no one is untouched by it. We can only hope BP stays afloat long enough to pay the costs.

"The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html

The Obama administration granted this exception to BP.

Rolling Stone has a long, in-depth article about the BP spill and the Obama administration.

"On the campaign trail, Obama had stressed that offshore drilling "will not make a real dent in current gas prices or meet the long-term challenge of energy independence." But once in office, he bowed to the politics of "drill, baby, drill." Hoping to use oil as a bargaining chip to win votes for climate legislation in Congress, Obama unveiled an aggressive push for new offshore drilling in the Arctic, the Southeastern seaboard and new waters in the Gulf, closer to Florida than ever before.

...The president, for his part, praised Salazar as "one of the finest secretaries of Interior we've ever had" and stressed that his administration had studied the drilling plan for more than a year. "This is not a decision that I've made lightly," he said. Two days later, he issued an even more sweeping assurance. "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," the president said. "They are technologically very advanced."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=4

@ Daniel Montgomery wrote on July 26, 2010 11:17 PM

"Last week, I streamed the documentary "Crude" on Netflix. It's about Chevron -- you mention it used to be part of the trust that also split off into the entity that would become BP -- and how they've raped the Ecuadoran rain forest and its people. They've been in court for more than a decade, and there may be another decade before the case is decided."

CRUDE!

I remember watching PBS late one night, and they had author Peter Maass reading passages from his book: Crude: the Violent Twilight of Oil.

In fact, they might have been showing the hour long video, which is available on his site for streaming, download and embedding.

Either way...

I never forget how he described the truly horrific sight of seeing what amounted to evil preying upon the helpless. It was surreal. It was like Heart of Darkness as viewed from the pit. And it made me glad I could feel what I did; the ability to, consoling me that I had not lost my soul. That I was not blind to the suffering of others and whatever my faults and failings, at least I'm "not that".

And for thinking and feeling that, encouraged to continue doing what I was doing; for knowing I was doing the right thing every time I recycled, or took public transit, etc.

I can change the world, it's just a little tiny piece of it, is all. :)

By Randy Masters on July 26, 2010 11:29 PM

@ Ursula on July 26, 2010 8:01 AM

As a European, I do not understand this great divide between us and Americans. Very generally speaking, Europeans are afraid of corporations but trust (to some extent) their governments. Americans are deathly afraid of their government, but trust in the corporations, because “the market will regulate itself”.

. . . . Corporations are a net plus for America...
. Make sense?

Not to me it doesn't. Ursula is correct. The Europeans are much more sophisticated than we Americans are. To me, being in league with the conservatives is tantamount to joining in on a suicide pact. Ever since Bush/Vader took office, we have been dying the death of a thousand slices. According to Fox News, the British have regulations that would have prevented the spill from being out of control, by way of a shutoff valve. The oil companies shook down our politicians to prevent that regulation.

We Americans only have the illusion of freedom. On another thread, I went into detail about why a corporation is inherently evil because it is an artificial person. So I won't cover that territory again. I will restate my conviction that nearly all of the corrupting influences that plague "our" government and "our" society are brought about by corporations and unions.

The service I receive from government organizations is always superior to that of corporate run ones. If you really think about it, to denigrate the "government" is to denigrate all the dedicated hard working American civil servants who do such an outstanding job on our behalf. I have no problems with paying Americans to run our affairs, for in doing so, we are paying ourselves. Corporations have no such allegiance to any entity other than themselves, which means they are free to exploit people worldwide.

I once saw a video taken in a country south of here. In it a crop duster plane flew over a field where a pregnant woman was working. There is no doubt from that video that the pilot saw the woman. Yet he released the pesticides. As I see it, the only difference between that woman and you or me is that if someone had done that to us, they would go to jail.

The pursuit of profit leaves little room for a conscience. Shakespeare: Richard III: The conversation about murdering the fellow by dunking him in the wine barrel; one of the guys is reluctant. The other one reminds him of his pay. "Ahh, where's your conscience now?" he says. Oh—and some Christian guy said something about "the love of money" being "the root of all evil."

@ Steve:

Those who accept it as an axiom that corporate profits come before the needs of citizens and governments are the same people who vote for tax cuts for billionaires. How these people can consistently be hoodwinked into voting against their self-interests is beyond my ability to explain.

Three words my man: God, guns, and gays. You know, the issues that matter.

I'm starting to wonder if the tragedy of it all is that, by this point, America is so addicted to oil that it's impossible to kick the habit. Vacations to other states, jobs in other cities, large grocery trips several miles away... all of them require oil to get there.

What could we do? Most people can't buy new cars. Even if we could, what would we do with the millions upon millions of oil-running cars? Scrap them? Put them away in some junkyards? Would it be possible to convert oil-based cars to electric/solar/whatever? If so, how much would it cost?

It seems that it all comes down to the same thing. Whatever happens, the poor people lose.

Surely, we need Congress to do something. Someone said there's nothing we can do ex post facto. Well, surely there's a law somewhere in the books that we can get them on. Endangering workers has to be against the law, even for corporations.

It's frustrating to read about how much the world sucks and feel like there's nothing we can do. What can we do?

"What became of America?" Thomas Jefferson asked God.

"They turned it into a store."

BP said Tuesday that it plans to cut its U.S. tax bill by $9.9 billion, or about half the amount pledged to aid victims of the disaster, by deducting costs related to the oil spill.

Yours, Roger Ebert, is a refreshing voice. For I think you hit the nail on the head: Corporations wield too much power. They operate with what amounts to impunity. A slap on the writs, in seems, is the worst punishment the U.S. government is willing to exact.

I'm Canadian, and it seems to me that the American public is unwilling to address the issue of unbridled corporate power. Americans are mad at BP, but not mad enough to effect fundamental change, not mad enough to take back control from the BPs of the world.

This article - www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28land.html?hp - seems emblematic. It appeared today, on the front page, of the NY times website.
It's about the Bohemian Grove encampment, an annual two-week event in which thousands of rich, white men camp out in a Redwood forest in California and burn effigies and put on plays and make business deals.

The campout brings corporate and government elites together. Powerful people, explains the article, make big decisions at Bohemian Grove:

"Here, in 1942, the Manhattan Project was conceived. Here, in 1967, Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan were said to have settled on who would first seek the presidency. And here, in 1981, Caspar Weinberger, then the secretary of defense, gave a “lakeside talk” that seemed to hint strongly of the military buildup to follow."

Yet the thing that's really galling about the article is its tenor and reader's comments. Rather than focus on what goes on inside Bohemian grove, the article derides Bohemian Grove protesters. It caricatures them as conspiracy theorists and crazy lefties. The overwhelming majority of its reader's comments do the same.

Wrote Charles:

"What are these folks actually protesting? Freedom of association? So what if folks with some money want to get away from it all and enjoy some conversation, the woods and fraternity. No laws are being broken and it seems like nothing but harmless fun. Sounds to me like a bunch of bitter lefties who are just about always angry and looking to protest some out of towners coming to a woodland ranch."

Wrote (more concisely) Anduarto:

"Who Cares?"

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that the men who go to Bohemian Grove are sinister, that they planned 9/11, that they are racist. But I do care. I care that they meet in such a frat-boy way, that government and corporate elites burn