Take a look at this headline from this article:
Um… which side are you on, guys? Why are you promoting a cap to BP’s liability? Especially this early? And esssssspecially considering that the liability will easily exceed $10 billion???
Had you read the second paragraph of the article you linked to, you’d have seen that there is already a cap, and, as you quoted, this bill would RAISE the cap.
Right now BP (and any other spill) is only liable for $75 million in damages. Total. For this kind of mess.
No cap dude.
$10 Billion? Are you crazy??
Oh, well, if you’re going to argue that there shouldn’t be a cap at all, yeah, I can get on board that kind of thing. I think damages caps are ridiculous.
But if we’re going to have a cap, let’s at least have it be high enough to hurt and not just make a company wince a little.
But then, I’m the guy who keeps asking when one of these corporate “persons” is going to go to jail for their conduct. (Never. I know. I only point it out to emphasize how retarded the notion of corporations=people is.)
Oddly enough, you never mention the actual criminal statute supposedly violated by BP’s conduct, leading to the belief that you think people may simply be placed in jail when you, personally, disapprove of their actions, a notion kind of on the wane since a certain signing party under a tree at Runnymeade.
Oh look. Bricker’s here to argue technicalities and steer the conversation waaaaay off-topic. For a minute there I was worried.
Really? Last I heard, the whole “locked up indefinitely on so-and-so’s say-so” thing was making a huge comeback.
Well, to be fair to Bricker, Snowboarder Bo kinda hijacked it first, by bringing up the concept of criminal penalties, when the subject of the legislation being considered in the OP’s link is civil liabilities, and the caps on them.
The wisdom of allowing corporations to operate as Fictional Persons, with civil rights separate from those enjoyed by the individual Natural Persons who derive profits from the corporations is certainly a worthy topic of discussion. But it’s not really the subject of this thread.
Yeah, but you have to appreciate the awesomeness of the reference “a notion kind of on the wane since a certain signing party under a tree at Runnymeade.”
Hey, you want to talk irrelevancies? I thought it was spelled Runnymede.
Using Bush admin logic can’t just label them unlawful enemy combatants and strip them of their rights because?
Snowboarder Bo can claim (and, as he himself said,this isn’t the first time) that he wants BP to be put in jail for its crimes. He can do this repeatedly, in different threads, and he’s not hijacking.
But if I dare to point out the teeny tiny problem of there not actually being a criminal violation at hand, THAT is hijacking.
Right?
So explain that to me, please. How are his multiple comments not hijacking, but mine are?
My view on caps of this nature is ambivalent. On the one hand they are good long term policy (which is why they exist) and on the other hand they are utterly unsaleable to the lay public after a big incident like the present one. This leads to extra legal pressures (such as will be put on BP here) and calls for retrospective legislation etc. It also means that justice isn’t seen to be done, whether it is or not. These things are bad for the rule of law generally and perhaps it’s better to just have no caps even if that is bad long term policy.
To put it simply, caps are good because they allow well operated companies with good asset backing to compete on the same playing field as low asset cowboys in high risk operations. You might think that BP have a lot of money and so they should pay it all over, but BP is only there because of the caps. If the caps go, so will BP and in future rigs like this will be operated only by cowboys with nothing to lose beyond what they are insured for, and their insurance policies will be limited (there ain’t no such thing as a policy for an infinite amount). Meanwhile, their trustworthiness will not be better than BP: it will be worse.
As I understand it Exxon paid out a lot of money over the Valdez. You can argue all day about whether it was enough and how long they took to pay and so on but in the end they paid an amount that not many companies *could *pay. And with no caps, Exxons and BP’s just won’t be in the game: it will be Lucky Ocean Company SA of Panama who own one ship worth a few tens of millions, and an insurance policy to the lawful minimum and if they have a big spill those assets will be exhausted and then that will be that. Maybe they’d have as good crews as a reasonably well run multinational and as much (or little) chance of causing a big spill. Maybe. Personally I doubt it.
Why aren’t they also criminally liable too? From here:
If Daniel Carson can be locked up for 16 years for a cocktail of charges including oil pollution that destroyed a whole 2 acres, surely the fictional person BP can be locked up… for life?
It is the same result in either case. Without a cap, a company like BP might go out of business. If they are still standing after paying the bills, honestly I would expect my representatives to have thought of ways to finish them off (I know, what kind of fantasyland do I live in where representatives enact the will of citizens over oil companies?) And what would criminal liability for a corporate person even look like? If not a ban from this or that group of countries, it’ll be something else that cripples their competitiveness and… puts them out of business.
I suppose the caps are proposed based on the argument, “Society is addicted to oil, and big stable companies are better to drill it than cowboys.” Except, with fictional liability, at what point do you stop the destruction? No insurance policy will cover damages for destroying the entire planet. Money becomes irrelevant at that point- the only path is to not destroy the planet. With a damage cap, these fictional persons operate in a fictional world of fictional consequences, with nothing ever to bring them in line with reality, no matter how beyond the pale. If the risks are too great for anyone to survive, the business should not be allowed.
If no cap means juggernaut companies go out of business, big companies understand that things like drilling safety and disaster preparedness are a matter of life and death… for them.
But the demand for oil simply has to be met? Guess what? Supply just ran into a fucking wall.
This is extremely disingenuous. ** Bo**'s post only leads to that belief if you have no idea what laws BP might be prosecuted under. Are you really so uniformed as to be unaware of the various criminal charges being proposed?
We could start with involuntary manslaughter based on BP’s alleged knowledge of the life-threatening condition of their rig, a rare but not unheard of charge in these kinds of cases. There’s definitely some OSHA violations, if they are covered by that act, which can be criminal and include jail time. We could then move to the more solid ground of criminal penalties under the Clean Water Act and other environmental statutes, if you like. Perhaps you’re not familiar with the criminal fines paid by Exxon after the Valdez spill?
I’m not saying the facts fit these charges; I imagine we don’t know that yet. But to assume Bo wants to lock them up because he doesn’t like them is just bad form on your part. Either you really couldn’t imagine these criminal charges and haven’t read the various mainstream articles discussing past criminal charges in similar cases and proposing them in this case, or you’re actually aware of these possible charges and felt like bashing a leftist based on an unreasonable interpretation of his post.
Actually, I simply thought that Bo is dumber than a bag of pigshit, and thus had no idea of whether criminal charges were even possible, and was simply bleating his usual complaint about the idea that a corporation has a legal persona.
You, on the other hand, have at least indicated the charges that might conceivably filed, but haven’t really indicated any factualbasis for them. And if I dare toask for them, I will be overly legalistic and hijacking. I should just accept that anything bad wished upon or about BP is not to be questioned, and any defense of them is evil, right/
Forgive me for mistaking your post for having substantive content, when in fact it was a baseless poke in the eye of someone you don’t like. Carry on.
I’ll explain it to you once this thread devolves into seven pages of arguments over the definition of ‘oil spill;’ but only after at least four Supreme Court cases are cited.
Bullshit. It was baseful.
It cannot be both reasonable to think criminal charges could be legitimately brought against BP based on this incident, and reasonable to think Bo’s endorsement of such charges is evidence of his wanting to prosecute BP because he doesn’t like them. By holding the latter position, you implicitly reject the former.
I missed this edit before.
There is evidence suggesting that BP was aware of the dangers in operating this platform without the kind of safety and anti-spill technologies present on other companies’ platforms. This recklessness could rise to the level of manslaughter, or more likely support OSHA criminal charges and lead to charges under environmental statutes. It will depend on exactly what they knew about the risks and what they did about them, information that is usually revealed after a criminal investigation is begun (and in the case of the numerous investigations into BP’s disasters in Alaska and Texas, is likely to be quite fruitful).
You’re perfectly entitled to ask what the relevant facts are, and what laws might apply to those facts. But people usually ask those questions before forming an opinion. When you write, as you did above, that there’s no criminal violation at hand here, and that people supporting criminal charges are, in effect, lefty loons, then people might mistakenly assume you were basing that opinion on an understanding of the facts of the event and the relevant law. I think that’s unfortunate, because while it may well be that Bo is no more aware of the relevant laws than you are, people on this board take your legal opinions seriously.
I suppose the criminal side of the case is a bit off-topic from the OP. So my apologies for extending the hijack.