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Today's Top News
Bonuses for Bosses at Killer Corporations?
Eleven workers dead, untold volumes of sea-life poisoned and more than 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the sea. If that's what an historically good year for safety looks like at TransOcean, I'd hate to see a bad year.
Most people know the name TransOcean only because of the explosion on the company's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the spill that followed -- the largest offshore oil spill in US history. A presidential commission investigating that disaster declared that lax standards caused the deadly mess. Despite that, TransOcean executives are receiving safety bonuses.
In a filing Friday, Transocean said, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record." In fact, the company says it was the best year in safety performance in the company's history —which has to make you wonder about other years.
Safety apparently accounts for a quarter of the equation that determines executive bonuses at TransOcean. The rest, predictably, is “financial factors," including new rig contracts. So, even as it doles out that safety bonus -- worth $374,000 above salary - to its CEO, TransOcean is trying to score more contracts -- and it's working hard to dodge hearings by the U.S. Interior Department and Coast Guard, telling its employees they don't have to show up despite being subpoenaed.
Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Reilly says TransOcean "just doesn't get it." Maybe what needs most to be "gotten" is the importance of not leaving corporations to police themselves. "Self-regulation" has been the regulation-of-choice for corporations for years, and for a generation of politicians in their pocket. But when it comes to safety, self-enforcement doesn't do the job. Just ask the families of the eleven men hurled to their death off the TransOcean rig, or the relatives of the 29 miners killed a year ago this week at the Upper Big Branch mine owned by serial violator, Massey Energy in West Virginia. Persistent violations there preceded the deadly gas build up. Now multiple investigations continue with every player pointing the finger at every other.
Is a safety bonus for then Massey CEO Don Blankenship on the way? Who knows. A good safety year for any of these companies still tends to be bloody, and they're not alone. According to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sixteen workers a day die from work-related injuries, with hardly any consequences to employers for failing to comply with guidelines. With four million injuries on the job each year, it seems that employers have decided that it's easier to flout the law than to comply.
What we do know is workers lives need defense not contingent on statistics and the arcane calculus of CEO performance in which people's lives are measured against profits. As long as companies have great lawyers, workers need their own defenders. And that's part of what people are marching for this spring in thousands of "We Are One" rallies taking place in solidarity with unions under attack in Wisconsin and around the US. Protestors are remembering Dr. King's assassination and his last stand, with striking public workers fighting for the right to unionize. And they're remembering the TransOcean Eleven, The Massey 29. The reality is, although politicians and executives say we "all" have to share in sacrifice, some sacrifice more than others. And as long as bonuses are paid to the bosses who don't protect workers lives, workers still need unions who will stand up for them.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllJust one more example of the detachment of large corporations with reality. Banksters screw up they get bailed out, then give themselves big bonuses, Transocean, kills people destroys the environment, ignores it, give themselves big bonuses. Totally irresponsible behavior, it's pretty amazing that it is tolerated the way it is.
The corporate definition of SAFETY is not the same as your or mine.
SAFETY for them means they have bribed all the right politicians to assure that their profits and assets are safe, and they are safe from prosecution.
Never said a more thruthful word.
The big boys can play all the dirty tricks they want and never ever be held accountable. Why, because the people elected to office are there for one thing only, to line their pockets with the most cash available. Their motto "who the hell cares I've got what I want".
Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip.
The hype I've heard about 2012 was how there would be a pole shift. Of course the thought was that it meant the north and south poles, with the earth being turned upside down. The earth isn't shifting, civilization is. For some time there's been a shifting in the how things are, but it's only been in the last dozen or so years that we've become aware of how everything is getting so topsy-turvey. In just two years there's been a big speed up, with the Tea Party express, and SCOTUS rulings resulting in major shiftings. By 2012, we could well see the complete upside down turn of our civilization as it once was.
And all we'll hear from Murdoch Media is that unions are bad, comprised of unprofessionals and protect sluggards from being fired.
And people in my town will continue to believe it while they pay homage to those passers by in Bentleys and Rolls Royces. Genius and hard work produce "success". And we all admire the big shots and applaud when they speak at the Ritz.
When we allow a corporation to keep any profits BUT they can dump any losses on the government it creates a system that forces these corps to cut every cost and corners they can -
then when the Shit hits the fan the gov bails them out - then sells off the profitable parts of the old company for a dime on the dollar back to the very same predators.
we've created a predator vampire industrial system......
Look for many more global disasters in the near future w/ this Business Model.
More self rewarding from the folks who hippies used to call (and I still do) the establishment.
What is the establishment and who do I think is in it? Members of federal, state, and local governments who are in decision making positions (lowly clerks like I was are not a part), senior management of large corporations and other institutions (those with the power to reward themselves big time), shareholders with enough of a stake to affect policy, the "old rich" who've had wealth for many generations, the financial services and aerospace industries (though not the people who just have jobs), some others. Not all villains, in fact most of the ones I've met were decent, friendly enough people. But they are the ones at the top of the heap who are usually able to evade being held accountable through access to lawyers and public relations professionals, most of whom are members in good standing.
I don't think they are part of a carefully controlled and contrived conspiracy; it's more of a shared mindset that allows them to compete against each other, jockey for position and preferment, and still collaborate when that works for them without giving the game away. No one person or group seems to be solely in charge. There's no headquarters that can be captured, no boss that can be taken out, no one specific place that can be blown up that can change things.
Their self justification skills are highly developed and continue to be astonishing. Even the meanest and greediest of them seem to be able to believe they're doing good things and that all problems are caused by other people.
They would be difficult to transform, dislodge, or replace. But the world they created and inhabit is coming unglued and they do not and will not know what to do. But as far as I can tell, neither does anyone else including me.
no need for a "carefully controlled and contrived conspiracy when we have Ivy League MBA'ers out there doing satans work. All for an extra nickle.
NOTHING is more danger to the world than a person w/ an MBA from an Ivy League School - except maybe an Economist from the U of Chicago!
Profits at any cost lead directly to these disasters -
and considering we're coming up on 30 years years of this predator nonsense many more of these disasters will start occuring because the industrial plants are getting old.
I worked with a lot of MBAs at one of the many jobs I had that sucked, and never learned what their Masters's degrees supposedly gave them mastery of. I could never figure out what it is they had learned in those schools.
They were smooth and presentable but they weren't as smart as they thought they were. Much harm is caused by people who think they're smarter than they actually are. To me they're more dangerous than outright evil people.
PARANOID: I term the nexus you describe as "Carpicon." Like a machine, it does not regard the world (or people) as living entities, and therefore every sacred item is rendered into a commodity, its essence subsumed into what its retail value merits.
Increasingly there is a glaring disconnect between the measurements of the Stock Market and the decimation of living resources. It would be a comedy if it were not so tragic. We are at the end of an age, and it's one which uses deception as its chief tool and weapon. Based on Pisces, where one fish swims to opposes the other, the symbol is that of a complete paradox. A dislocation of reality!
Relating to a prior thread, no one really knows how much radiation is crossing the sea and beginning to compromise the health--and genes--of millions of Americans. We all pretend this is not happening. Most pretend that the seafood from the Gulf is now safe to eat.
If anyone has the intestinal fortitude to face a summary of recent events, man-made and climate-related (both compromising long-term food sources), they can't help but feel mortified. Any other reaction is based on deception, whether self-deceived or managed by media and its barons of masterful illusion.
Last year in August I explained the astrological implications of a dire set of influences and referred to it as "The Great Coming Apart." More recently I suggested that the dates of April 2-4 would prove explosive. The Weather Channel termed yesterday's weather events as the most notable in some time. There were over 1000 reports of damages from high winds, wild rains, isolated tornados, and lightning.
The Shamans believe the ring of fire is being lit, the mountain chains awakening. What mystic-healers refer to as Kundalini, an invisible force that animates unseen energy centers within the human body owns a geological counterpart. And it's been awakened.
Meanwhile so many "leaders" of nations and industry elect to continue on the SAME course, even in the face of deadly/diabolical outcomes. Thus the cosmic verdict is not a good one.
Years ago I met a man in his 20's, limited to life in a wheel chair. A quadrapalegic, I got to know him until I could pose the quintessential question. Just as the Priest wondered about theos lives lost to a bridge collapse in Peru (Pulitzer Prize winning novel: "The Bridge of San Luis Rey") I've always felt that people receive warnings before "the big one." If they heed the warnings, they can avoid worst possible scenarios. The young man had had other dangerous would-be wake-up calls, but they didn't alter his life enough to shift him away from the grave accident that deprived him of the use of his limbs.
The analogy holds for once great nations, particularly our own as frauds who have managed, largely through the rapacious reach of their unrestrained egos, to attain the top of the fiscal junk heap, refuse to alter their ways. Since they own media and are making headway into a similar ownership of education, they have tools to twist minds to their own bidding. Therefore not enough people understand what's going on, or hold the intellectual acumen to connect the dots... a few in this forum blame "the people," or endlessly reference the individual's responsiblity for the inside job. Sure, that's ONE factor, but hardly the major one given the momentum of our times.
A number of markers have been crossed, a spiritual version of crossing the Rubicon, and very few nations have elected to alter their course. In my view, this makes harsh earth changes all the more inevitable.
Dialog in this forum is often removed from what's actually taking place to resemble a "Theater of the Absurd." Even the politics of labor versus management is becoming moot in the face of so much of civilization TRULY coming apart at break-neck speed.
Many people readily focus on the events of the day, but discount the numerous phenomena that took place yesterday, or a few weeks/months ago. Following the media's march into THE moment, they fall into the illusion that these matters are now safely done away with. This is not so. One million are still homeless in Haiti, many millions are still tainted by the detritus of war in Iraq, 4 million or more were left homeless from the floods to Pakistan, while Australia is still cleaning up from its floods. The awful event in Japan is a wound to all of us! It is a wound to the earth, to living systems, this atop the nearly-equally toxic wound to the precious Gulf of Mexico. These regions represent the world's food stocks, its fisheries.
We all know--or should--that one seminal staple removed from the web of life alters the whole thing. There will not be enough doctors or medical personnel to handle what emerges from these chemical and nuclear exposures. It's death--on a wide scale--in slow motion. The Hedge Fund moral misfits who take their profits from 3rd world mothers who can't afford grain for their children will discover their own hell. Perhaps the only salvation taken from the bankrupt equations of modern times is the knowledge that those who sold their souls to get "the most," will see The Most lose all of its alleged value.
I never thought things would happen this fast, even though I've known about The Prophecies for 30 years. It seems that humanity was given a reprieve, and with war still The Main Event, and with so many left to starve (indicating a gaping wound where compassion ought to be), the agencies of karma have decided to let human beings see where their lifeless systems lead.
Safety will ensue (where it can) from living from the heart, and learning to share with others. It was gratifying to see that type of behavior dominant in Japan. These words from a recent 60 Minutes documentary haunt me: "There are not enough living to bury the dead." Stop and think for a minute what it means that bodies are too radioactive to handle. Most civilized societies make ritual of burying their dead.
The situation in Japan is a KEY event of our times. Its ramifications will be felt for a long time, and likely touch many lives. Sadly, The prophecies are unfolding...
"Even the politics of labor versus management is becoming moot in the face of so much of civilization TRULY coming apart at break-neck speed."
Very true. Yet people are most upset by the dissing of the Easter Bunny and that ditzy college girl who made fun of Asians in the library on YouTube. Cruelty to puppy dogs also arouses huge public ire. Human intelligence is a weird and amazing thing.
I hope we make it at least till 12/21/12 -- the Mayan calendar's supposed day of doom.
i like this comment soiuxrose...
what do you mean by, "the prophecies are unfolding"?
thanks
The following are just some of the individuals who spoke of the great earth changes 20-60 years ago:
Edgar Cayce
Ruth Montgomery
Gordon Michael Scallion
Sun Bear
Mary Summer Rain
Yogananda
Bible's Revelation (and possible explanations)
Mayan prophecies (and possible explanations)
Now there are the ecological implications of systems collapse, added to a financial equivalent (due to derivatives and a FALSE economy based on the one nature is expected to back with REAL capital, Natural Capital).
The point is, things cannot and WILL NOT continue much longer in their present patterns... The Shift has begun.
Can't believe nobody's gone to jail. Let them spend their bonuses at the prison commissary. Government of laws. Yeah, right.
There is no authority who can put them in lockup. The government ("of laws not of men; here the people rule" to quote President Gerald Ford's magnificent absurdity) is in on all of it. They are not going to put themselves in jail.
SO TRUE.... CONGRESS WILL NOT TOUCH ANYONE ON WALL STREET FOR WHAT THEY DID TO SCREW THE ECONOMY, WHY? BECAUSE THEY CONVINCED CLINTON TO SIGN LESGISTLATION PERMITTING BANKS AND STOCK BROKERS TO RUN FREE... OH AND YES CONGRESS WOULD KEEP ON EYE ON THEM TO MAKE SURE THEY BEHAVED!
THEY KEPT AN EYE ON THIER POCKETS AS THEY INCREASED IN VOLUME AND THAT IS ABOUT IT!
THEY WOULD HAVE TO PUT THEMSELVES IN JAIL TOO! NEVER HAPPPEN!
Corporate upper management are the nobility of this time in this rapidly unfolding Second Gilded Age cum business Feudalism. Instead of aligning with the Catholic Church to give their rule a patina of 'godly legitimacy' as the Kings, Dukes, & Barons of Medieval Europe did (though many Protestant Evangelical pastors are in on the con), they trumpet the sociopathy of Ayn Rand & the Chicago School as the new gospel celebrated by the likes of Fox Noise Channel.
'Welcome to the New Dark Ages' Bad Religion
Two possible responses:
1. ``Corporate America, here is your bailout! Would you like a tax cut with that?''
2. ``We won't pay for your crisis!''
If the second option is yours, join US Uncut on Facebook, or US Uncut Rhode Island if you're in our neighborhood. Also see: http://www.usuncut.org/blog
There should be a corporate "death penalty".
Suppose that due to the criminal negligence of XYZ, Inc., 11 people die and there's a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Subsequently, the state legislature of whatever state these jerks incorporated in revokes their charter and mandates the sale of the assets of the corporation at auction. Seize or sell everything: bank accounts, patents, office furniture, oil reserves, buildings, vehicles,...you get the picture. Let the stockholders of XYZ, Inc. get screwed royally instead of us. Corporations that behave themselves could buy all this stuff and get rid of a competitor as a bonus.
In the case of foreign corporations like BP, something similar could be arranged.
Maybe then these businesses would stop being sociopaths.
GREAT IDEA ! DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE JAIL TIME FOR THE BOARD AND DIRECTORS!
Sounds like you get a bonus if your lowly employees die. How would it be any different for some mafia boss to offer money for contract killings of greedy CEOs who care nothing about the people who work for them?
Laura Flanders should appreciate that safety is very expensive. Safety measures cut into profits. Profits make shareholders happy. Besides rich people don't work on oil rigs. Costly safety measures will discourage free enterprise. GREED IS GOOD.
"GREED IS GOOD" !!
DO YOU WORK ON WALL STREET BY ANY CHANCE ?
To quote Benito Mussolini:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Anyone still question what type of government we have here in the U.S.? Hmm?
G R E A T QUOTE !
I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHERE YOU GOT THIS QUOTE !
PLEASE LET ME KNOW !
BADBOYPALOMALO@YAHOO.COM
We need a strong Third Party which can embrace liberal Democrats, and Conservatives who are sick of never ending War. We have to stop blaming each other, and go after the large Corporations and Banks that Caused this Mess. Everyone of us will need help from someone at some point in our lives, no one can do it all by themselves and Social Contracts are Important. I see what the Working Families Party is doing in Oregon, and I think Nationally it might offer us an Alternative to the Democratic Party.
peacekeepertwo,
"We need a strong Third Party which can embrace liberal Democrats, and Conservatives who are sick of never ending War."
Sorry, but I don't see how that is possible when there's just too big of a divide. Not just over social issues, but basic economic issues. When you look at the three things which absolutely have to be done to effect any true or lasting change, I don't see any "conservative" as being on board.
So what do I think as being these three things?
(1) We must reign in the corporations. More specifically, we must break corporate power, political and economic. Nothing else we do can possibly change things long term unless we do this.
(2) We must take back our financial system. This means nationalizing our central bank, The Federal Reserve at a minimum. It also means bringing the banks and Wall Street under control.
(3) We must eliminate our billionaires and mega millionaires and ensure that we never again create such a monied class.
If we won't, or can't do these three things, then anything else that actually gets accomplished will be fleeting at best.
WELCOME TO THE MODERN VERSION OF CORPORATE ETHICS.
THE MORE YOU SCREW THEM THE MORE YOU'LL BE REWARDED !
IT WORKED VERY WELL FOR THE THUGS ON WALL STREET WHY
SHOULD OIL PIGS BE ANY DIFFERENT!