Election cacophony ...Oil spill cacophony ...
Indicative of an infestation of dementia?
There is a curious link between Exxon Valdez in 1989 and bank failures 2008 (blogged about here).
BP (big politicians and big polluters) said originally that there were 5,000 bbls of oil leaking at toxic ground zero; recently they said they were capturing 15,000 bbls a day from that same leak; now government hired scientists are saying 100,000 bbls a day are probably leaking.
Somebody go figure (without using voodoo math) ...
Great link on Exxon Valdez and CDOs. On top of all that, as the article points out, they got off for a song, after delaying the court proceedings for 20 years with expensive and obfuscatory legal tactics. What the article didn't say was that Exxon ended up paying out in legal fees about what they would have if they'd just have paid the victims off directly in the first place. Of course that was secondary to establishing a favorable legal precedent, knowing full well that the spill itself would fade from public attention fairly quickly. Good job Exxon!
ReplyDeleteBP, or whomever eventually buys them out, will have even more of an incentive to strongarm the public this time, and a much better political environment to do it in to boot! The idea that all this environmental and cultural damage can be quantified and then be conveniently "paid off" is flawed in the first place, but they'll make damn sure that they end up not even doing that.
There's really no punishment bad enough for these guys to my mind, other than seizing all company assets until this thing is taken care of, followed by a thorough investigation and prosecution of everyone involved in the affair. Needless to say, that won't happen, as any investigation trail would probably lead to widespread government corruption charges as well, possibly leading all the way up to Obama, Bush, and/or Cheney as well.
Dementia's the word for it alright. The corruption's systemic now and can no longer be fought. Corporate capitalism has won the day, and it's soon to be game over for Democracy in the USA.