He’s not trying to have it both ways. He isn’t saying this is a failure of bureaucracy, but that the executives that appointed the regulators purposely picked people who would be asleep at the wheel or complicit in violating those regulations because of their stance on regulation. It’s not an inconsistent or contradictory position.
Yorick:
You keep referring to these ‘threats’ against BP by the administration, but you’ve said yourself that you haven’t a single piece of evidence about what took place in this meeting. Since everything you keep railing about in this thread is based on something that you have zero proof of, doesn’t that mean that pretty much every post of yours in this thread is pretty much irrelevant? I mean all you seem to be doing is ranting and raving about something that you admit you have no proof whatsoever of. It makes it hard to take you seriously when you have no evidence for what you’re complaining about.
There is nothing inherently impossible about regulating well - hell, the financial industry was well regulated from the Depression until nearly the turn of the century. Saying government can be effective doesn’t mean government has to be effective - especially if the people in charge of the government or regulation don’t believe in it. This isn’t that tough. You put a professional in charge of FEMA, it works. You put an unqualified political hack in charge, it doesn’t. If you put a pacifist in as Secretary of Defense, I bet you wouldn’t have an effective army either.
No, I don’t think the BP management is stupid enough to have to be threatened. I’ve done enough negotiating to be pretty sure that $20 billion was already considered an acceptable number. There might have been some negotiating on the payment schedule, and perhaps Obama started asking for $30 billion, but this was not a shock to BP. The threat, as it was, was inherent in the situation.
I suspect Barton was stupid enough to say in public what his buddies were saying in private. I also don’t think there is a reasonable chance they will go bankrupt, though it makes for good headlines. BP spews cash, and the gulf crisis is not affecting any wells outside the Gulf. Their bottom line will be hurt, but bankrupt? Not likely.
Given that there are no laws for this exact situation, and that time is of the essence, and that laws are made by men, the government and BP sitting down to negotiate this in no way violates the rule of law. There is always some imbalance of power in a negotiation, and almost always some strongarming, sometimes by both sides. That is what it is all about. When you buy expensive stuff from a salesman or company, you do it right before their quarter closes, to improve your negotiating position. The Republicans know this very well - they are just being negative for the sake of being negative. The fact that this is likely to make the lives of those affected by the spill a lot better clearly means less to them than trying to get news points. Barton just went too far and got hung out to dry.
BP told to stop circulating settlement agreements with coastal Alabamians | AL.com There was a thread on it not long ago.
So why bring up deregulation? You should be railing against government incompetence. This could have been your conservative awakening 
Sure the amount was an acceptable number but so what? BP will have to pay substantially more due to all the litigation. Let me be clear…I have zero problem with the administration convincing BP to pony up that dough. I sincerely hope that BP realizes that $20B is but a down payment and did this freely. The only problem I would have is if the administration threatened criminal prosecution, as Holder said, or civil action that would bankrupt the company in the absence of any deal. We’ll probably never know what happened in that meeting.
Do you really believe that Republicans want the government to pay for this disaster and not BP? This seems straightforward to me. Barton expressed concern that the administration extorted BP. Even if BP is completely responsible the government has no legal right to extort money from a company. Obama said that he would inform BP that they will put this money in a fund for the victims…doesn’t sound like persuasion to me.
I hope you are right. Shrewd negotiation is much different than an overt threat. I suppose all of the details of the fund are not yet known so there may have been some bargaining that benefits BP that I am not aware of.
That’s interesting but much different from what you suggested. BP was sending out payments to individuals with, as far as I can tell, no strings attached. You suggested that all of BP’s payments were made in the form of a job offer that also limited liability.
No, it’s the other way around. Job offers went only to people who signed off.
I posted the OP. I’ve read the responses.
Bringing it back to the OP it seems that this was a good alternative agreement with the Obama administration. If they were to fight it in criminal court there could be a lot white-collar BP execs in jail. It doesn’t sound like their defense would stand to the legal sharks that would tear their defense apart.You evaluate. If you are weak you negotiate. If your case is strong, you go to court to fight. It looked like enough of BP’s actions has been exposed to make their defense less tha weak. Therefore, evaluation and cut a deal time.
The OJ trial was brought up. Not guilty in criminal court but found culpable in civil court. That gave the Goldmans’ the tool to torture OJ’s life. The BP case could be the opposite, Minimality on the civil charges but the criminal charges could have sent a bunch of high-rollers to jail.
Cutting a deal is cutting a deal. That’s the American system of justice. I don’t blame BP for wanting to cut a deal to avoid criminal charges. That seem like prudent business.
The Republican critics of the deal, look to me, like people that don’t want restitution for the harmed so that the can say “nothing was done” and try to score political points.
The victims be damned! If we make them whole and can’t use them for propaganda purposes then we have to do something that looks like they are being screwed by Obama’s Evil Washington even if they are not.
I still suspect its a preliminary step for a contingency plan. Right now, a fair number of the money folks say that BP can eat this shit sandwich and not die. But it hasn’t stopped gushing yet, so the shit to mayonnaise ratio is growing more unfavorable by the day. So, if BP does fall apart, and thereby can’t pay, they get to say “Told you so, but you wouldn’t listen!”
And if nothing like that happens, they never mention it again and pretend they never said it.
You are arguing with the wrong person. gonzomax posted the orginal comment concerning this. Either way, my point is that this was not the only form of payout by BP.
I’m not sure that our system of justice allows the trading of cash in exchange for not doing time. Cutting a deal is one thing but there is potentially both a criminal and civil matter here.
That’s absurd. The Republicans are not going to score any political points by hindering the process of distributing money to the victims…regardless of who is doing the distributing. I don’t think any Republicans are opposed to a deal between the administration and BP. As I’ve stated the problem would be if the money was extorted by threat of prosecution, etc. Maybe this is a philosophical difference and, to the left, the ends justify the means, but we are still a nation of laws.
Kobe Bryant and Vince Neil were allowed to do it.
Okay, great. Now, if you can find some actual evidence of extortion, this would be a meaningful discussion. As it is, it appears to be little more than an attempt by you to parrot baseless accusations in the hope that somebody starts believing them.
If you don’t think this discussion is meaningful then butt out. Nobody is asking you to read or respond to anything I post.
Yorick, if you have no basis for an argument then why are you trying to argue anyway?
Nobody is asking you to post it, either.
You are correct…what’s your point? I’m not whining about you reading my posts so stop whining about what I post.
During the Bush years, was it incompetence or sabotage? And I’ve been railing about that for years. BTW, I worked for the NY Conservative Party as a volunteer in 1966 and 1968, subscribed to National Review for years, read tons of WFB’s books, voted for Nixon in 1972, Reagan in both elections, and never voted for a Dem until Gore. I know all about conservatism. It’s been tried. It has failed miserably.
In any case, ineffective regulation does not excuse corporate malfeasance.
I believe a criminal investigation has already begun. Would you want a blanket pardon that would keep people who violated the law out of court?
No, I suspect the Republicans (some, not all) would rather have corporate penalties minimized and delayed until they become a slap on the wrist, and then to let the people affected be stuck with it. Not the fixing and cleanup costs, but the compensation. Kind of like how they think people swindled into taking bad mortgages should lose their houses.
Since when is having basis for an argument a requirement to post. A few posters in this thread have argued that Republicans just don’t want BP to pay for the costs associated with this disaster. Is there any evidence for that? Nope. Have you asked them to provide evidence? Nope.
Remember this is a place to debate ideas. If Holder threatens a company with criminal action and then a deal is made that transfers $20B from BP to a third party at the government’s request, then anyone sensible should ask whether a threat was made…regardless of whether or not it could ever be proven. I’m sure you can at least see how some people might believe this. I’ve seen plenty of arguments here go on for pages with less evidence.
Now, contrast that with saying that the Republicans just don’t want BP to pay. In reality it was Barton questioning the tactics of the administration. No evidence is offered but, since most here probably agree with the statement, nobody points out how absurd it is.
I’m not whining. I’m complaining that you are tossing around accusations of impropriety without any evidence whatsoever.
But not fantasies.
Oh, wait, this IS the forum for witnessing. Sorry.