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Why Obama Should Put BP Under Temporary Receivership
If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs, in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP’s north American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
The Obama administration keeps saying BP is in charge because BP has the equipment and expertise necessary to do what’s necessary. But under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public’s interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public. As a result, the public continues to worry that a private for-profit corporation is responsible for stopping a public tragedy.
Five reasons for taking such action:
1. We are not getting the truth from BP. BP has continuously and dramatically understated size of gusher. In the last few days, BP chief Tony Hayward has tried to refute reports from scientists that vast amounts of oil from the spill are spreading underwater. Hayward says BP’s sampling shows “no evidence” oil is massing and spreading underwater across the Gulf. Yet scientists from the University of South Florida, University of Georgia, University of Southern Mississippi and other institutions say they’ve detected vast amounts of underwater oil, including an area roughly 50 miles from the spill site and as deep as 400 feet. Government must be clearly in charge of getting all the facts, not waiting for what BP decides to disclose and when.
2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher. BP is now saying it has no immediate way to stop up the well until August, when a new “relief” well will reach the gushing well bore, enabling its engineers to install cement plugs. August? If government were in direct control of BP’s north American assets, it would be able to devote whatever of those assets are necessary to stopping up the well right away.
3. BP’s new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky. It wants to sever the leaking pipe cleanly from atop the failed blowout preventer, and then install a new cap so the escaping oil can be pumped up to a ship on the surface. But scientists say that could result in an even bigger volume of oil – as much as 20 percent more — gushing from the well. At least under government receivership, public officials would be directly accountable for weighing the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy. As of now, company officials are doing the weighing. Which brings us to the fourth argument for temporary receivership.
4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy. Saturday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his team of scientists essentially halted BP’s attempt to cap the spewing well with a process known as “top kill,” which injected drilling mud and other materials to try to counter the upward pressure of the oil. Apparently the Administration team was worried that the technique would worsen the leak. But under what authority did the Administration act? It has none. Asked Sunday whether U.S. officials told BP to stop the top-kill attempt, Carol Browner, the White House environmental advisor, said, “We told them of our very, very grave concerns” about the danger. Expressing grave concerns is not enough. The President needs legal authority to order BP to protect the United States.
5. The President is not legally in charge. As long as BP is not under the direct control of the government he has no direct line of authority, and responsibility is totally confused. For example, listen for the “we” and “they” pronouns that were used by Carol Browner in response to a question on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday (emphasis added): “We’re now going to move into a situation where they’re going to attempt to control the oil that’s coming out, move it to a vessel, take it onshore ….We always knew that the relief well was the permanent way to close this .… Now we move to the third option, which is to contain it. If [the new cap on the relief well is] a snug fit, then there could be very, very little oil. If they’re not able to get as snug a fit, then there could be more. We’re going to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” When you get pronoun confusion like this, you can bet on confusion — both inside the Administration and among the public. There is no good reason why “they” are in charge of an operation of which “we” are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
The President should temporarily take over BP’s Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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54 Comments so far
Show AllI like Reich, but really, another article on why Obama should do something that he is not going to do? A bold action like taking over BP by Obama and Co.? Taking the offered help from the Iranians would have been a good, bold move, too -- you know, putting aside differences to, you know, maybe save the planet?
"No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent."
No president would allow this? I wouldn't bet the house on that, especially with Barack in charge.
Samalabear,
I agree with you.
No shit--I am sick of Reich stating what Obama should do. Doesn't he
see the writing on the wall yet?
Good freaking greif!
Chelsea
That's why its called what Obama SHOULD do, not what he will do (or in this case, won't do).
"It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped."
Absolutely!
I wonder if we'll have to wait 2 months for it to happen. Sooner or later I believe Obama's hand will be forced. I also think he knows this, even if he does not want to admit it to himself.
The world is burning on so many fronts (see the Israeli attack), as Obama sits afraid and paralyzed in the Oval Office. And the hurricane season is fast upon us!
Temporary isn't enough. BP can never repay the debt owed. All BP's assets should be seized, all their operations nationalized.
You know, I was thinking, having read the other essay on the Niger Delta, that this should be done with Shell and Exxon/Mobile, as well.
Salazar in April 2009 filed a special motion in DC Circuit Court to overturn the ban on drilling in the Mississippi Canyon Block 252, among others, obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity ,
thus purposely allowing the non-environmentally regulated drilling of this gushing Well.
i can't even rebuild my garage without an environmental impact statement and numerous public meetings.....
and obama has given out numerous "waivers" for deep water drilling AFTER announcing his moratorium.....
proves the old adage about planning and zoning....
"zoning only applies to poor people"
As I posted in another thread, the fact that BP is the cause of this disaster and has the equipment needed to address it, BP should be nationalized immediately. BP executives and BP the person should be rounded up and charged with 11 counts of manslaughter, EPA violations, OSHA violations, falsification of offical records, etc, etc, etc...
BP isn't trying to stop the oil flow. They are trying to save it or failing that , running the clock out until they can drill a relief well. They know if they manage to shut off the oil flow before a second well is drilled, they risk having the public deny them access to this oil field at all, regardless of the stated leases.
If they are so arrogant as to believe they will ever be allowed to drill there again, they are deluded...Alabama is bracing itself for the spill to come ashore there. We're only beginning to see the public fallout from this. I doubt prez Obama will be able to console them for much longer.
I hate to tell you this, but I truly believe that they may well be allowed to continue, under 2 potential scenarios;
1) political - with the CURRENT political atmosphere, all BP has to do is demonstrate that it has come up with "new, improved technology" that would take care of, or "prevent" any future spills. Voila! As far as this admin. is concerned the problem would then be solved! Or, as happened with Blackwater, simply reorganize with a new name and resume, having "bought" the permits from the "old" company.
2) legal - if BP doesn't abandon the well, or even if it does, the terms of its current permit may well allow it to continue (you better believe these permits are very carefully crafted to benefit industry) under a "grandfathering" concept. Even if the gov't "revokes the permit", BP could tie such revocation up in the courts for years, and if they get an injunction against an administratively issued cease and desist order, which could be granted by courts all too sympathetic to the argument that such an order, in advance of a court determination, would do "irreparable harm" to the company, they could continue activity as the case wended its way through the courts.
It seems to me the only way to stop this activity is legislatively, in other words, politically, which, of course involves changing, not just the current occupants but the current "bipartisan" atmosphere that allows industry to be in charge of the earth ......
I agree. Their only strategy from the start has been to save the well.
As Secretary of Labor, Dr. Reich quickly became a major pain in the neck for the first Clinton administration by telling the truth about the economy in front of God and everyone else.
("Yes, we have been adding new jobs - and if you have two or three of them you might be able to support your family.")
Now he's at it again. I certainly see his reasoning here and if it is legally feasible, I have to wonder why no one else has mentioned it. Problem is though, this suggestion would drop the "buck" squarely on the President's desk where he claIms it stops. Mr. Obama couldn't be too thrilled with that prospect. But then he has consistently squandered all of his potentially thrilling prospects. This time, he's caught in Dr. Reich's headlights.
As a local, down-to-earth observer remarked,
"Seems they ain't no good luck for nobody comes out'a Loosiana, 'cept maybe it keeps Cheney off'a the tube. Looks like them VooDoos is some more pissed."
they also kicked howard dean to the curb as soon as his 50 state strategy worked and the demonrats controlled the house, senate and white house at numbers unseen in over 50 years......
so much for rewarding "exceptionalism"
admit it - unless you're a ivy-league scumbag that's sold your soul to the corporate fascists you'll get NOWHERE in this administration....
hey sounds a heck of a lot like the last administration!
take away the team colors and the faces could we tell the difference between bush and obama....I say NO!
The change here is this administration claims more completence and less cronyism.
That's their claim anyway.
After the attack on 9/11 congress had the Patriot Act written and brought to a vote almost immediately.
The new FISA laws were produced in an instant and passed with little delay in the name of protecting Americans from further terror.
The decision to give $13 trillion to Wall Street Casinos was made over a weekend primarily by Ben Bernanke and some of his best friends to prevent the collapse of capitalism, or so they said.
Yet here we are in week five and not a single member of congress has produced legislation to protect the American people from a genuine, life and environment threatening disaster caused multinational oil oligarchs and their criminal enablers in government.
Where's the Save Americans and their Oceans Act?
Why does the congress not snap to action to protect those they are elected to represent?
Who is going to jail?
Who is going to lose their corporate charter?
Which company is going to have their assets seized?
You know the answers as well as I do: No one, No one, None.
It's going to be a long decade.
The business of selling terror to the American people has had a great payoff to multinational corporations who make their money in the business of death. The 'war on terror' has been the biggest fraud ever put over on the American people, and the investors in such, have managed to destroy our Constitution like no real terrorist could ever dream of having accomplished.
The banks unleashed financial terror, and get the goods.
BP unleased environmental terror, and I guarantee, somehow Big Oil will still win out.
I'm not drawing a grand conspiracy here, but since I'm on the subject, has anyone reviewed WTC7 lately?
Excellent point C-1.
They ALWAYS can cut checks and sign laws seemingly overnight when They want to. But only when it benefits Them. And correct, no one, NO ONE will go to jail or pay. Perhaps some lower sap on the totem pole might spend some time in the slammer, and an arbitrary fine will be imposed -- reduced to nearly nothing after years of litigation. Yeah, we know the drill by now. (no pun intended.)
What Reich says makes sense. I'm also for nationalizing the oil industry.
Just because Obama won't do something doesn't mean the idea shouldn't be put forth.
Obama has yet to support tough bank reform-- doesn't mean he should not have.
It is just pathetic the millions of animals BP is killing and I'm sure they care not one whit. After all, what do they care about ecosystems? They just want their CEO's to make millions, which they will. Wonder if their pay will go up! ha! Would not surprise me.
There is another reason to place BP in receivership and halt all trading of BP stock. The share holders of this company as just as responsible for this mess as the management and should not be allowed to escape the financial obligations of the clean up. If the sell off of BP stock continues there will be no BP. It will file chapter 13 and we will pay for this mess. Once again it is surely time to make people who profit from this massively corrupt corporation to pay up when things go wrong then maybe they will recognize there is no free ride here.
The murder of the Gulf of Mexico is the most vicious crime in world history for which all Republicans are instigators and all Democrats accomplices.
Do you really think Obama is unaware that BP is lying? Do you Robert Reich really believe he wants to do more but is hamstrung? If Obama is "incensed" or "enraged" it is because his dancing partner has made him look bad. The transparency that Obama is concerned about is that BP first reveals the facts to him so that he controls the flow of information. Obama is probably fuming because BP has been so clumsy in its lies that he may be forced in to take control, that he will have to figure a way to save the corporation from itself while appearing to serve the public interest. A much more difficult task. It may be too late for that. We can already see what side he is on. I hope this is his downfall.
Of course he understands what is going on. Reich is one smart dude, which is why he hasn't been given a position of prominence in this Admin. What he is doing is what more of us need to do; presenting logical, reasonable, potentially effective solutions. The logic for doing this is clear; if the admin. does it and it works, problem solved and this is good. If the admin. doesn't do it, it becomes increasingly clear to all, including those who still are inclined to give the admin the benefit of the doubt, that it is, indeed, not sincere and no longer "deserves" support, which many of us, though not enough, have known from the beginning. Continually claiming that folks who use this approach are idiots or shills, or making blanket statements to the effect that "of course he won't, he's bought and paid for" serves neither end .....
It is absolutely apparent by Obama's actions, not his words, that he is looking out for BP's interests, over the public's.
There is plenty of evidence that the leadership of the Democratic Party, and that would include of course Obama, has been bought by corporations such as BP.
Of course there is plenty of evidence, plenty for those of us who have known from the beginning. But for those who need to be hit over the head by a 2x4, it is useful to keep accumulating more, until we reach the political tipping point. I don't believe we can be so smug as to assume we have. I have continually been amazed by the public's willingness to overlook absurdities, but as they say, you can fool some of the people all of the time. Our task is to make that "some" a smaller and smaller number until it is no longer large enough to maintain the status quo, and continuing to publicly "challenge" the admin. to adopt reasonable proposals and then watch as it publicly fumble its responses is one way to do it ......
Even if it decides it's politically expedient to "do the right thing", the fact that it has taken so much of our effort to get it to do so and all the devastation that has occurred during the time it took, should give one, or two, or, hopefully, millions, pause and suggest serious reconsideration of the "practical wisdom" of electing such a bunch of folks who continually require such "pressuring" .......
asking obama to do the right thing vis-a-vis BP and the other corporations obama whores himself and the us government out to is like asking a tiger to change it's spots......
AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!
If the President puts BP into receivership, the government can then think publicly and freely about stopping the gusher. Thousands of non-BP engineers and inventors are now privately and in small groups thinking about the problem.
The gusher is spewing at 6800 pounds per square inch. If one long metal rod weighing 6900 pounds, with a one inch cross section, is dropped down the well, it should drop to the drill bit at the bottom where presumably most of the oil is entering through a vein in the rock. Better is a javelin-like rod coated with Teflon for streamlining.
500 extra-heavy and extra long javelins or angle irons will pretty much clog the 21 inch diameter pipe, cutting the gusher pressure down. 50,000 such angle irons will really cut the pressure, creating friction all up and down the length of the pipe. We'll be less unhappy when the flow is down 90%. At that point the slow oil well can be hooked up to a pipe and used for oil, or perhaps a mixture of mud and concrete can plug the well.
The alternative is to have the oil sheen heating up the Gulf of Mexico's surface waters to unheard-of temperatures, until hurricane season hits full swing when they shut the oil off, which is another type of catastrophe. BP will never take responsibility for a category 5.
If what you say is true the force coming out of the pipe is 6800*pie*rsqr = 2354058 lbs
You forget that this is not just a static head. The oil is moving at considerable velocity so the weight of the javelin would have to overcome this energy as well-- it would have to be one heck of spear to do that.
Right now President Obama looks like a cowardly suck-his-thumb Democrat, exactly the reason why no moderate should ever vote for a Democrat for at least the next decade, except when the Republicans are even bigger cross-wielding thorough crooks.
If you're a Democrat, especially if you hold a political job between now and the beginning of November, this do-nothing policy is a permanent cashiering of your personal job. Try to find a real job with 17% unemployment. On the other hand, a huge foreign oil company wants to be happy and they make campaign donations. What to do, what to do? This should be a real issue for any Democrat. Cue the Final Jeopardy music while the nice Democrat thinks about it for 30 seconds. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo...
Government could do some of BP's operations and cut their subsidies but the people in charge of government are just as corrupt like the BP. I have worked in the Dept of Energy and Transportations for one year each under project contracts with my employers. From experience and knowledge of their undercover business deals, they would not want government to be in charge of BP due to conflicts of interest. Government should completely divest the company to compensate for lives of all creatures lost. The money divested should be directed towards aggressive cleanup efforts.
"…one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history."
Reich needs to get up to speed on the severity of this disaster.
I believe that the executives of BP are so psychopathically greedy that they are doing everything in their power to save this oil field for their own at what ever costs to the environment.
They could have killed the well from day one and stopped all of this, but instead they are trying to slant drill so they can continue to pump oil for years to come.$$$$$
Reich is absolutely correct about what Obama should do.
This gusher needs to be stopped and the oil field below it needs to be sacrificed for all time.
What a shame for the human race and for future generations that Obama's God is greed, not the good for mankind.
It seems to me that there must be ONE HUMAN BEING ON EARTH WHO KNOWS HOW TO KILL THIS GUSHER NOW AND NOT IN TWO MONTHS.
Get one thing clear: This nor any other president is going to do anything to piss these guys off at BP or slow down the flow of oil or money.
The fact is, the federal government is just as criminal and surely as incompetent as the fools at BP.
Perhaps they might impose a "disaster fee" on ALL the oil companies to bring peer pressure to bear on each other to keep their house clean.
(Although they'd probably just ignore it like they are ignoring the EPA right now when it comes to dumping the toxic chemicals in the gulf.)
Nice to not have to listen to Washington, eh?
There are specific ties betweeen BP and the Obama administration, particularly Energy Sec Chu and his deputy Koonin (who was formerly at BP). As a commentator at Berkeley (which received BP money), Reich - who did not oppose BP's deal with Berkeley - should be more forthcoming about this cozy relationship,
See:
BP’s Ties to Agency Are Long and Complex
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/us/politics/26energy.html
and
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/steven-chus-ties-bp
It turns out that a substantial part of the $500 million in BP money for the research lab that Chu directed was described as going to 'biofuels' was actually for research on oil wells, potentially including those in the Gulf.
From the program description: "to develop highly efficient ways of reaching oil and coal ... Researchers are investigating the possibility of altering the semi-porous rock that holds oil, which in turn, would enhance its flow to the surface, making it easier to access hard-to-reach domestic oil reserves"
While Chu was lauding BP's grant of $500 million, he said nothing of the $3 million that BP spent (according to official state records) to defeat California's proposition 87, which would have taxed oil companies in order to provide public universities with state funding for research on clean energy.
Q: Who is collecting the oil soaked booms, where are they being stored and what are the plans for them? Can they be reused? If not, will they be buried? Burned? Shipped overseas for "disposal".
Inquiring minds want to know.
I want to know what is going to happen when the cutting blade opens up a hole in the riser and the pressure from inside blows oil out the side where the cut is. At the very least, won't it cause a huge billowing cloud of black, dense stuff to come out and obstruck the view and maybe even cover the camera lens that is supposed to be operating the cut?
Note: This article also appeared on Alternet and I came across a comment I fully agreed with (except for his reference to Alternet on the article) by a great poster James108 and I thought that I would share his thoughts here since I have nothing else to think of it. I wanted to acknowledge that I borrowed his earlier post show that I strongly agree with it. Below is his post to show my agreement. I couldn't have written it better than him:
This is ridiculous. Obama's shortsightedness pushing for this very drilling operation ahead of the required environmental studies, exclusions he appeared to continue to grant after the spill, and Salazar's legal maneuvering around the protection environmentalists fought for and won from Bush directly caused this mess. And you want to give him more power over this. Ridiculous. You realize he is bought and sold ten times over, and lies straight to our faces, right???
Now why would we want an even better spin doctor directly in charge of big oil? He's going to be too busy pushing for cap & trade, since Gore & Co. seem to have billions poised on that, and nuclear power plants in poor neighborhoods. This oil show is pocket change to him I would think. His history was more with the corn ethanol scam and nuclear, via Archer Midland Daniels, although he did vote for the Bush big oil giveaway bill, so why stop there I guess. There's his old Exelon buddies, where he tried to rewrite a bill to let them decide which leaks to report.
I am all for regulation, but it seems Reich completely misses, that land was actually protected until Obama admin maneuvered around those protections, using what power they did have to do big oil's bidding while no one cared to care to tell people what was happening when he negated the court ruling protecting it with legal maneuvers and then granted BP an exclusion from the National Environmental Protection Act and then didn't even do the study that was part of their requirement from the appeal. This is no different than saying Bush and Cheney should have nationalized big oil under their control. Being a better liar and convincing environmentalists and liberals to vote for war and destruction is a little bit more evil I would say.
He is dismantling the populist protection progressives and environmentalists fought for when they actually cared, and you'd think Reich would have something better to say than pay no attention to his own short-sightedness and corruption and give him more power and control. That would be like putting the chief culprits of the meltdown in charge of the fed and then focusing on just the people left or something crazy like that.
http://alleyesonabama.blogspot.com/2010/05/obama-administration-helped-bp-quash.html
http://uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/29a13260-3283-43dc-abe7-5918a1fbffc8
Besides, according to Obama admin, they are in charge of this spill cleanup effort and have been since "from the moment this disaster began".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/obama-oil-spill-press-con_n_592149.html
so if you believe him, there's nothing more for them to do since they've been calling the shots already. There you go, just change the speech you listened to.
You raise a very good point, one also made by the post below (or above, depending on which way you run this thread).
Perhaps the only argument that could, at least theoretically, be made for nationalization is that this is the only scenario under which, because the gov't is, again, theoretically, accountable to the populace and serves, theoretically, at the pleasure of the populace, these operations could be stopped should the populace so decide. Granted, that's an awful lot of "theoreticals", but leaving it in private hands leaves only "the market" in charge and that's one theoretical I'm not too impressed with, and never have been ....
It appears that Evo Morales is dealing with the same thing in Bolivia; while condemning Chevron, he, nevertheless seems to be proceeding with state controlled drilling.
We could, as a society, stop this, but not as long as "private property" is the supreme law of the land ....
BP was a government-owned company for most of the last century. We can thank the British and American governments for the success of oil companies over the past century and today. They subsidize them with taxpayer money and use of the military and secret service. Considering the history of BP over the past century, their privatization in the 80's was probably a good thing. The worst oil spills in history were caused by governments. The US caused the Gulf War oil spill and the Mexican government caused the Ixtoc I oil spill. BP was the reason the British and American governments orchestrated a coup in Iran a half century ago which was the start of war in the region still going on today. They are the reason we supported dictators and then bombed civilians during war with those same dictators. How is handing the oil company back into the hands of the government going to help? With more minimal government, BP would have failed decades ago before the Second World War. Without the government and with only the free market we would get most of our energy from renewables today.
Are you retired oil, Will? Because, I sense that your argument lacks conviction and logic. Capitalists and free marketers always strive for dominance and power, even to the point of monopoly if it can be attained. That's their job. The notion that free markets left mostly unregulated, might give rise to a smaller and more altruistic renewable enterprise defies gravity.
This date Tuesday June 1, 2010 at 2:55
BP's camera is on the oil gush from the rizor laying
horizonally, the end of the existing rizor which is
being told as the main leak ...
I still have not seen again the gush they showed for
several hours friday night coming from the ocean floor.
It was at least five times the gush coming from the end
of the rizor that they are showing at this moment.
There was absolutly nothing attached to the gush coming from
the ocean floor, not the rizor or any of BP's ROVs or tools.
Which leaves me to believe that the BOP was blown off of
the well head Friday night and the are not telling us and
that all the video since then, tring to cut the rizor
and install a second rizor may be fish food for us.
I posted a link to you yesterday that might be an explanation. Or might not, but it does deal with your question.
Hear, Hear, what a good idea, recievership for BP.
Too much have we been hearing about the rate of spill flow being what BP thinks it can siphon off. And BP denying the observations of others about the total extent of the leak spread.
I am not so sure about the US government taking charge. They are already denying expertise and culpability. Of course that makes them incompetent to have granted BP permits to drill in the first place, unable to detect or even investigate corporate lies. I simply would not trust them to make the decisions. Having such a vested interest in the oil, politicians cannot be distinguished from oil industry executives in reliability or truth
A composite emergency team with scientific, engineering and environmental expertise and full powers regarding actions to be taken about blocking the spill, and with access and power over all necessary resources, now thats more like it. Make them the recievers. Corporate PR, executives and politicians get lost. President Obama and a few politicians and oil executives can have a none-voting role. Until current power is relinquished, this problem will not be solved.
A similar emergency team with equivalent powers has been required for decades, for that slower but ever more impending fatal disaster of climate change, with similar emergency powers. Does anyone thing that corporate powers will let them form and take charge? Shut down the coal power stations? It is, after all, an emergency. Until current power is relinquished, this problem will not be solved.
Except, when you spend four decades or more chipping away at government diligence and expertise and replacing them with incompetence, laziness and outright larceny, there isn't much left to run an oil company or anything else of any consequence. In that sense, almost every corporate structure that has been built during that period of time is now both impossible to regulate and too big to fail.
BP must pay. No doubt about that. But, responsibility must be shared with the US government.
They licensed oil and gas production at depths without there being any plan or equipment in place to deal with blown wellheads or fractured pipes.
The fact that they're making it up as they go along proves this.
If you can't deal with it, don't do it.
Or license it.
"Why Obama Should Put BP Under Temporary Receivership"
If its legal,and it should not be ,try it,
You will have a court battle.
And that will cost money, tax dollars , and us paying more at the pump, either way , Americans will pay for this legal BS.
President Obama should make the 4th amendment law of the land again, stop all warrant less surveillance ASAP.
Either we have a constitution, and rule law, or we have a Fascist rule of law.
Live free or die.
Remember
Do I detect a Libertarian strain here?
As I recall, the preamble to the Const. says something about its purpose being to promote the general welfare. Or would you prefer leaving that to BP?
I do believe one suggested definition of Fascism is corporate control of government, as opposed to democracy where a people's gov't controls corporations, so one could reasonably argue that FAILURE to adequately control a corporations predations on life support systems, e.g. the oceans, if that is what is necessary to promote the general welfare, is not only contrary to the spirit of the Const., but itself an evidence of fascism.
I agree that the concept of eminent domain, e.g. has been abused but this isn't even a question of arguing that because that assumes there is "private property" which is at issue, unless, of course, you believe that everything is someone's "private property" and that corporations can own the oceans and what's in, over, and under them ....
I sense a *Libertarian* strain indeed..............