Again, the $3 billion BP has spent on the ‘cleanup’ so far is nothing in comparison to BP’s profits last year.

If the government threatens BP’s Delaware corporate charter, then maybe we see some real action. Until then, BP and government will keep diddling around and not getting the gusher stopped.

In the meantime, the disaster grows- Millions Of Migrating Birds Headed Toward Gulf Oil Spill Mess

Two lessons from BP Gulf gusher-

1) get off fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy
2) get corporations out of government- they are corrupting public priorities

The ‘lamestream media’ keeps citing these huge numbers for the amount that BP has supposedly spent on their oil gusher cleanup.What people  need to understand is that this amount is a small portion of the huge profits that BP made just in the past year.It’s pretty clear that BP is still telling the government what do and not vice versa.That’s why’s it’s past time to apply the ‘corporate death penalty’.

Demand the state of Delaware to revoke BP’s corporate charter.

“BP deserves the corporate death penalty,” Green Change co-founder Gary Ruskin told Corporate Crime Reporter last week. “ BP America Inc. does not have a God given right to perpetually violate our laws with near impunity.”

“Look at BP’s record. The Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. Three environmental crimes, one deferred prosecution agreement, and a very long string of big fines and other wrongdoing.”

“There comes a point when enough is enough. Our nation should not have to tolerate any more abuse from this company. No more deaths, no more catastrophes, no more giant pollution disasters.”

“The corporate death penalty will remove BP America Inc. from the field of action. It will stop their carelessness and lawlessness – for sure.”

“If our laws mean anything at all, we’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say that if you violate our laws again and again, you will lose your charter.”

“Deterrence is very important. We’ve got to revoke BP’s charter to deter other companies from acting with such carelessness.”

“If we don’t, then we basically invite other companies to cut corners everywhere, and disregard the law, because the consequences won’t be worth worrying about.”

“We can expect that the threat of charter revocation will make companies act with greater respect for environmental, health and safety laws.”

“Severe wrongdoing deserves severe punishment. When a company does something as awful as the carelessness that lead to the Macondo oil rig blowout and disaster, they deserve the corporate death penalty.”

“This is a simple matter of justice and of the dignity of our society, and really, of all of us.”

From UrbanSurvival.com, one of my favorite sites (not that I agree with everything on it):

For whatever reason, I awoke this morning ready to solve many of mankind’s most perplexing problems.  While such an inclination would bar me from a career in politics, law, pharmaceutical outfits, the military, and so forth, it nevertheless seems like the right thing to do.

 


President Obama’s speech last night promising to get tough on BP and make sure they pay for the Gulf Cleanup, hasn’t stopped the net-mill rumors that BP was an ‘inside job” which question how certain Goldman and BP insiders were able to so deftly move in ways that seem on the surface to defy mere chance.

 


Which gets me to my first pair of solutions.  I’d suggest that there are certain kinds of industrial sites where the workers do not undergo serious background checks to the degree which might be required if these same people were to be, for example, fire control personnel on nuclear-armed military craft, or flying jumbo jets around.  So step one would be background checks for people in refineries, oil platforms and hazardous materials operations.

 


Beyond oil marshals on platforms and in plants, background checks including quarterly financial statements for operating personnel would make sense.  Wonder how many BP employees, officers, directors, and contractors dumped stock ahead of April 20th?  Gotta think AG Eric Holder’s team will be asking the same thing.

 


But this gets me to an even bigger concept worth pondering:  Just like average citizens can get put on no-fly lists for who knows what reasons - going to the wrongprotest, or something, how about a lot more useful list I call the no corporate involvement list? 

 


Let’s say that a corporation has a board of directors which was in place when bribes were paid overseas in violation of US law, or who were in their lofty stations when a company was deliberately profiting by misrepresenting products in, oh, collateralized debt paper, just for example.

 


Better than the odd prosecution of one fall guy for the organization, I’d suggest that the whole executive level of such firms, two layers deep be barred for five-years in cases of massive public misfeasance.

 


Besides creating huge turnover in some of the world’s largest ‘investment’ (which I think of as ‘ripoff’) banks, the technique would go a long ways toward restoring public confidence in government’s ability to operate as advertised.

 


Instead of ‘no fly’ lists, I propose: “No investment banking” lists, and “no corporate directorship” lists.  And for the money guys: “No stock trading” lists. 

 


Just to keep everything on the up & up.

I read this and think about how much this would improve not just the world, not just the country, but also RIchmond.

This is an anonymous message making the email rounds at investment firms:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?

 

Getting beyond the initial cringe over its overall offensiveness, I think this rant accurately captures how out of touch many wealthy people are in this country.

For one thing, unions, where you can still find them, are not nearly as powerful as the corporations.

Also, look at the phrases being thrown around:

everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years, 4 months off a year, retire at 50 with a pension, making $85k a year without upside, for $5k extra a summer, new 80k car, 35 percent tip at our business dinners

Put this into context of the following blog post, which discusses the supposedly average U.S household income (and personally, I find over optimistic):http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-does-the-average-american-make-breaking-down-the-us-household-income-numbers/

From Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin):

My first wish for 2010 is that President Obama will direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to begin federal prosecutions:

• • of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — for war crimes and treason against our Constitution.
  • of 30 or so leaders of the largest banks and investment, insurance, accounting, bond rating and law firms responsible for the irresponsible home mortgage lending and fraudulent repackaging of bad mortgages into investment instruments that led to the housing crash — for crimes of purposeful lack of due diligence and any other crimes they perpetrated upon investors, including false balance sheets.
  • of the high-level federal appointees at Treasury, the Federal Reserve and other agencies who were told by staff what was going on with the mortgages/investment instruments and what could be done about it, and who did nothing — thus violating their oaths of office and statutory authorities.

My second wish for 2010 is that Obama wakes up and says, “My God, I am guilty of Bush’s ‘sins.’ ” And that Obama immediately orders the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan; orders the cessation of illegal attacks against alleged terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere; orders the FBI to draft criminal charges against suspected terrorists and presents these charges to federal courts and international police agencies, requesting the apprehension of such terrorists through police channels; orders the cessation of illegal spying on all Americans; orders the immediate closure of GITMO and moves all prisoners to the basement of the Pentagon to stand trial in federal courts; orders the immediate cessation of all actions considered torture under the Geneva Conventions; orders the termination of all agency heads and generals who told him to do all these things; and orders the prosecution of present and past agency heads and generals who advocated the above actions or implemented these actions in violation of U.S. law.My third wish is that Obama then goes to a large park in Los Angeles, invites the poor of all races and nationalities, and states he has seen the error of his ways. He asks for forgiveness from the American people and the millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan whose lives he has ruined, and he states he will not run for president in 2012 but will spend the last three years of his presidency working to eradicate poverty in America with public sector jobs and training so that Americans can: live with their families, have a job to go to each day, have food on the table, have a roof over their heads, not fear sickness because they have single-payer/Medicare-for-all health insurance, believe in the future because their kids will go to good, free public schools and higher education, and have a secure retirement due to an improved Social Security system.And lastly, if Obama does not act on wishes No. 1 and No. 2 above in the first few months of 2010, we regretfully and forcefully move to impeach and remove him from office.We have given Obama a year of hope and patience. He deserves no more. We must create a crisis — the crisis of impeachment — and remove from office the person who has violated his oath of office to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States and to uphold and enforce the laws of our nation.Just as America has been strong enough to withstand the massive personal, corporate and governmental corruption of the last 10 years, we are certainly strong enough to withstand the turmoil of impeaching our president.We must take action against the crimes Bush committed and Obama is committing, or we lose our form of government. We must punish those at the top who break our laws or we are finished as a nation ruled by law, not kings.Obama either protects our Constitution and enforces the laws, or we, as citizens, are duty bound to throw him out using the most powerful tool we have: impeachment!

The author: Buzz Davis of Stoughton is a former Army officer and elected official and a retired state government planner. He is a member of Wisconsin Impeachment/Bring Our Troops Home Coalition and Veterans for Peace. 

Here’s a salute and appreciation for the volunteer efforts of Silver Persinger.Now, go read what he says by clicking here.

While the United States continues to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo forces are mounting a new offensive against Rwandan Hutu rebels in the east of the country with the backing of UN troops.Its a complicated issue, to say the least, but the problem with the continued UN military involvement is that it may make the humanitarian situation worse, not better. Should Americans lobby for a U.S./U.N withdrawal from the Congo? Perhaps, but its important to recognize that ultimately the region requires an African-generated solution. Africa Faith & Justice Network outlines some of the current issues.

District activist Peter Craig put the brakes on highway constructionMonday, December 28, 2009; A14We applaud the Dec. 20 obituary [”Peter Craig, lawyer in D.C. highway battles, dies at 81″] and Dec. 23 editorial [”The roads not undertaken”] on the life and work of anti-highway activist attorney Peter Craig, who died Nov. 26. Mr. Craig, Sammy Abbot, Reginald Booker and many other citizens prevented the devastation of many more highways being built in the District, and the building of yet another bridge across the Potomac River on Three Sisters Island. Ultimately, their work and that of others led to the creation of the Metrorail and Metrobus system and high-occupancy-vehicle lanes on Interstate 66 and other highways that we now all take for granted.Arlington activists worked closely in the 1960s and ’70s with D.C. activists — particularly Sammy Abbot, but also Mr. Craig — to prevent the building of Interstate 66 through Arlington until it was scaled down and modified.If Mr. Craig were alive today, he would doubtless cheer Arlington environmentalists’ efforts to keep an environmentally sound I-66 through Arlington and to prevent its needless and wasteful expansion from its current four lanes into neighborhoods and parklands.B. Audrey Clement and John Reeder,ArlingtonThe writers filed a lawsuit in October in U.S. District Court in Alexandria against the Virginia and U.S. departments of transportation in an effort to halt the widening of I-66 in Arlington.

From AlterNet:

Wall Street’s return to robustness and Main Street’s continued deterioration are the main takeaways for 2009 that stemmed from the 2008 choices to flush the financial system with capital and leave the real economy to fend for itself. Lies that exacerbate this divide only perpetuate its growth. With that, here is my top 10 list of lies. Please consider adding your own, and let’s all hope for a more honest New Year.

Click here for full article.

From AlterNet.org - The stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

WASHINGTON - December 22 - For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

Click here for full article and ‘award-winners’.