While the federal and Gulf Coast governments have largely ceded the role of stopping and cleaning up the huge environmental disaster caused by the explosion and eventual sinking of the Deep Horizon well, British Petroleum also spent the weekend pursuing a different agenda with locals: stopping lawsuits and cleaning up their PR image.
This effort comes at a critical time. The oil slick, currently the size of Puerto Rico, is beginning to paint local coastlines. Communities that make their money from the water face “minimum” 10-day fishing bans, and the mood from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle is angry—and scared.
So BP has dispatched a litigation mitigation team, which held public information meetings in small towns along the Gulf Coast this weekend. The pitch to local fishermen, business owners and local officials, based on one such meeting in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a small commercial fishing village: You don’t need to hire lawyer. Instead, call a BP hotline, and claim total damages for yourself and your businesses of up to $5,000. The damaged individuals and businesses would be required to sign BP paperwork, company officials said.
The exact nature of that paperwork wasn’t made clear. (A local BP representative referred questions to a national spokesman, who wasn’t available for comment last night.) But Bayou La Batre Mayor Stan Wright told the hundreds that packed the community center that he feared it would require them to forfeit their right to sue in the future. “Let me say this as your friend,” the mayor told the attendees. “If you take one penny from BP make sure you don’t sign a release form….if this thing lasts 10 years, you can forget about it.”
He received applause when he told the fishermen to work through their trade associations and “don’t work through BP.”
And so the arse covering begins…
From: Obamaforever
To: to whom it may concern
per post #1
More information on the $75 million liability cap.
Who’s going to pay for the damage? BP is on the hook for the cost of the cleanup and already faces dozens of lawsuits from commercial fishermen, tour boat operators and beachfront property owners. The company has also set up a claims center at 1-800-440-0858.
It’s not clear how much the company will have to pay out for those damage claims. The Oil Pollution Act, passed after the Valdez spill in 1990, created a federal trust fund with taxes paid by oil companies. That law caps BP’s liability at $75 million, but a bill introduced in the Senate Monday would raise that to $10 billion.
Based on my readings the $75 million cap will be throw out if BP is found out to have done things they were not suppose to be doing.
The up-shot is that BP and everybody else involved with the drilling will be in court forever trying to place the blame on someone else.
If you live on the coast and have a claim you could wait ten, twenty or more years before you saw any money.
In my opinion everybody involved in voting for the $75 million cap should be “fixed”!!!! This would include their entire goddamn gene pool!!!!
Obamaforever, #33
Who do you think pays those taxes for the federal trust fund from the Oil Pollution Act, really? If BP can’t get around paying it with the legion of lawyers and accountants they have on the payroll, they will pass on the taxes to the consumer by increasing the price of petro. And the cartel will protect its own. Legislation always leads to Failure.
#32–BM-BB==Well “obviously” free market is a tale told by and believed in by idiots.
Why don’t you tell us about yourself?
Seriously–its idiots like you ((and Greenspan)) who raise this philosophy/dogma past common sense, past history, past experience we are still living thru now.
For this blog–why don’t you explicate how YOUR beliefs didn’t directly lead to the crash of 2008 and tell us why reregulation along the lines of Glass-Steagall is not a necessary social control over this unregulated business?
Or would that have been a litigation mitigation legation?
bobbo, libertarianism fails when its Dogma blinds them to the rising threat of Corporations that can only be held in check by Government thru the will of the people by effective regulation and enforcement said, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH….
Sigh.
Bobbo, if you were as smart as you think you are, you would know that monopolies are just about impossible to maintain without violence or threat of violence. (Read that as government.)
Exercise for the reader: Come up with a genuine Libertarian argument for the existence of the Fed.
THEN use Greenspan as a straw-man in your anti-liberty rants.
Somebody–pure BS. Must be Dogma????
No body talking about monopolies until you raise it as some kind of counter to what I don’t know.
Another dislocation: why should anyone be limited to a Libertarian argument for the existence of the Fed? This Thread is about Lack of Regulation of Big Oil==nothing to do with Fed. My question was about deregulation of the SEC–tangential at best with the Fed.
Greenspan actually PREVENTED regulation of derivatives under the theory of the free market correcting itself without the need for regulation==a close inbred bastard member of the libertarian family.
While you FAIL to answer/avoid any of my questions, I’ll answer yours. Monopolies can be maintained by government==such as doctors controlling healthcare but the one’s of main concern today, the SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD, and of my questions are held by High Capital Requirements to compete. An economic consequence you can look up.
Even stupid people can call LIEberTARDS stupid because they/you ARE that stupid as your continuing failure to answer any specifics clearly shows. I have never claimed any level of intelligence, education, experience or job status to buttress my postings, so I can only guess you like my catching nom de flames. For that, I thank you.
@bobbo, #35
Since you posted the question to me in 2 separate columns, I’ll post this retort in both.
Man, ok, since you want to bring up Glass-Steagall, let’s talk about Glass-Steagall. First of all, President William J. Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law, which effectively repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act, the part that eventually led to the crash of 2008. So keep kissing his butt, you liberal scum.
And before you say, oh, Bubba couldn’t help it, it was Veto-proof, read:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2007/04/how-democrats-were-hijacked-by-wall.html
and do your research on what the final tally was on the vote for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, for which your precious Joe Biden, D, Delaware voted AYE!!!! Boo-Yah! You’ve been PWND!!! 😉
It’s really funny when people think there is any such thing as the free market in this country, then turn around and use Greenspan as an example. Greenspan is the penultimate example of a regulator. The very fact that he set monetary policy by setting interest rates, regulated banking institutions and took over troubled banks “temporarily” using stolen money from tax payers puts him in YOUR camp, the camp that opposes the free market. When he introduces money into circulation, he inflates the currency because the more of it that exists, the less it is worth. So, please, don’t confuse Greenspan’s ideology with the free market. That’s an oxymoron.
Finally, there is no such thing as effective legislation, as history has repeatedly shown, over and over. Lawyers are good at leaving loopholes in legislation, so they and their buddies can get around it, while you and I get screwed.
for anyone who is amused at this LIEberTARD’s inability to answer a direct question, the hilarity continues, if at all, on an later thread:
http://dvorak.org/blog/2010/05/04/health-emergency-people-could-dieoakland-is-running-out-of-weed/#comments
“Why should anyone be limited to a Libertarian argument for the existence of the Fed?”
Not anyone. You. Because you keep using Greenspan as some sort of libertarian bogeyman.
I was just trying to point out how ridiculous that is.
Do you think you’ve evaded my point?