BP Fined Only 3 Months Profit For Oil Spill

[Relentless]

Different day... same inexcusable rape of our world by a small handful of asshats.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/15/news...html?hpt=hp_t1

BP agrees to pay 4.5 Billion in fines....BP has booked total profits of $43 billion over the course of the subsequent nine quarters.

43B / 9 = 4.77B profit per quarter

So for polluting the entire gulf in one of the worst cases of ecological recklessness in human history, the company is being fined a grand total of only 3 months of profit... nobody is going to jail... and the message is 'go ahead and fuck around with safety measures all you want because the worst that can happen is you get a fine equal to 3 months of profit.'

When something like this happens, there should be a string of people responsible wearing handcuffs and orange jumpsuits on their way to prison.

[glamourmodels]

they chalk this up to the cost of doing business, no sweat off their back

[Spunky]

The fine should be triple that..fucking ridiculous

[MattPornerBros]

Originally Posted by Relentless

Different day... same inexcusable rape of our world by a small handful of asshats.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/15/news...html?hpt=hp_t1



43B / 9 = 4.77B profit per quarter

So for polluting the entire gulf in one of the worst cases of ecological recklessness in human history, the company is being fined a grand total of only 3 months of profit... nobody is going to jail... and the message is 'go ahead and fuck around with safety measures all you want because the worst that can happen is you get a fine equal to 3 months of profit.'

When something like this happens, there should be a string of people responsible wearing handcuffs and orange jumpsuits on their way to prison.

Well their stock declined plus people not using BP, plus if you lose your entire profit for a quarter stock will keep dropping. It's probably triple the actual fine in overall impact no?

[SGS]

Whatever the fine you would be paying it on your fuel bill anyway.

[flashfire]

gas prices keep going up and these clowns keep making record profits

[woj]

Originally Posted by SGS

Whatever the fine you would be paying it on your fuel bill anyway.

no kidding, lol @ people cheering on that the fine should be higher...
consumer would end up paying for it indirectly anyway...

[Coup]

I'm surprised they didn't get a tax subsidies instead.

[Harmon]

Let's just hope that the sea life never get the opportunity to have a say in the situation.

Death penalty.

[Robbie]

Just being devil's advocate here:
BP has to pay 4.5 Billion dollars in fines.
They already paid all the money for the clean up and all the months following the disaster.

4.5 Billion is a lot of money to anyone except the U.S. govt. (which spent 10.6 billion dollars today and will do so again tomorrow, etc., etc.)

The world economy is on the brink.
Oil companies are a huge part of the equation when it comes to the economy.

1. Is it economically a good idea to fine them?

2. If (as many here are calling for) they were fined even more massively...will it reverse the recent drop in oil prices that are bringing down gas prices over the news that the U.S. can now be the number one oil producer in the world?

Just asking.
That fine won't even cover HALF of what the U.S. federal govt. will spend today. But is it possible that it could hurt the world economy?
I'm thinking that if someone took that much of my money for the year all at once...(the fine is by the barrel and may actually end up being more than 21 billion dollars) it would cripple me.

Again, just being devil's advocate here and asking some economic questions.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/b...plc/index.html

[Relentless]

The size of the fine is much less important than the fact that it will only be a fine. When things like this happen, people need to be prosecuted. We put guys in prison for years for selling a dime bag of pot on a street corner, but people who willfully ignore safety protocols and permanently pollute the entire gulf do not even get investigated.

Whoever made the decision to skimp on safety should be going to jail. Whoever was the proximate cause of this kind of unnecessary catastrophe should be made PERSONALLY liable for monetary damages. That is how you prevent other people from doing the same kind of short-sighted stupidity in the future.

These corporate fines will all be passed along to consumers.... However, they can't pass along a 3 year jail sentence to consumers... and they can't get back their summer home from consumers if it is taken from them in a personal bankruptcy proceeding.... which is what they should be facing individually.

[Johny Traffic]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Let's just hope that the sea life never get the opportunity to have a say in the situation.

Fingers crossed

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by Relentless

The size of the fine is much less important than the fact that it will only be a fine. When things like this happen, people need to be prosecuted. We put guys in prison for years for selling a dime bag of pot on a street corner, but people who willfully ignore safety protocols and permanently pollute the entire gulf do not even get investigated.

Whoever made the decision to skimp on safety should be going to jail. Whoever was the proximate cause of this kind of unnecessary catastrophe should be made PERSONALLY liable for monetary damages. That is how you prevent other people from doing the same kind of short-sighted stupidity in the future.

These corporate fines will all be passed along to consumers.... However, they can't pass along a 3 year jail sentence to consumers... and they can't get back their summer home from consumers if it is taken from them in a personal bankruptcy proceeding.... which is what they should be facing individually.

Who would be the ones putting them in prison? The U.S. or Great Britain?

And isn't part of being a corporation the very fact that you are not PERSONALLY responsible for things just like this?
I know when I opened my corp. it was for tax reasons...but I was also told that it protected me from being sued personally (like if someone was in my office and got hurt).

Wouldn't that be the case here?
They would be protected from personal bankruptcy for sure.

I'm not sure you can throw people in prison for making a wrong judgement call (especially if it's a corporate decision)?

[onwebcam]

And...

BP Takes $32.2 Billion Write-Off on Spill; Earns $9.9 Billion Tax Credit

http://www.nationalreview.com/planet...reg-pollowitz#

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by onwebcam

And...

BP Takes $32.2 Billion Write-Off on Spill; Earns $9.9 Billion Tax Credit

http://www.nationalreview.com/planet...reg-pollowitz#

Something that drives me CRAZY is when the govt. doesn't get somebody's money...and they call it at "the taxpayers expense"

First off...only about half of us ARE taxpayers. Second, the federal govt. isn't actually paying them any money...they just are not TAKING that particular amount of money FROM them.

Check out how it is written in that article:

"now nearly half of BP’s $20B escrow fund will be paid for with taxpayer money
BP said Tuesday that it is incurring a charge of $32.2 billion from the Gulf response, and as such, it is claiming a $9.9 billion taxation credit."

So in other words it has cost BP 32.2 billion dollars. They are able to write off 9.9 billion of it in expenses.
I see nothing wrong with that.

By the way that is less than one day of what the Feds spend every day (10.6 billion).

But it's presented to the sheeple as "paid for with taxpayer money"....NO it's not!
It's not "paid for" by anything but BP's money.

Fucking govt. thinks that all of my money and your money and everybody's money belongs to them 100%. And any that you get to keep is "costing tax payer money".

I'm not defending BP in this rant. I'm just disgusted at the way that the federal govt. views things. We are all just a bunch of worker bees to supply them with money. And they have got the media in their pocket making sure to condition people to think the same way.
Disgusting.

[GAMEFINEST]

their laughing about that shit.

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by Relentless

So for polluting the entire gulf in one of the worst cases of ecological recklessness in human history....

If it was so bad, how did they get it cleaned up so quickly?

[xNetworx]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Let's just hope that the sea life never get the opportunity to have a say in the situation.

Death penalty.

Cool comment bro

[woj]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Something that drives me CRAZY is when the govt. doesn't get somebody's money...and they call it at "the taxpayers expense"

First off...only about half of us ARE taxpayers. Second, the federal govt. isn't actually paying them any money...they just are not TAKING that particular amount of money FROM them.

Check out how it is written in that article:

"now nearly half of BP?s $20B escrow fund will be paid for with taxpayer money
BP said Tuesday that it is incurring a charge of $32.2 billion from the Gulf response, and as such, it is claiming a $9.9 billion taxation credit."

So in other words it has cost BP 32.2 billion dollars. They are able to write off 9.9 billion of it in expenses.
I see nothing wrong with that.

By the way that is less than one day of what the Feds spend every day (10.6 billion).

But it's presented to the sheeple as "paid for with taxpayer money"....NO it's not!
It's not "paid for" by anything but BP's money.

Fucking govt. thinks that all of my money and your money and everybody's money belongs to them 100%. And any that you get to keep is "costing tax payer money".

I'm not defending BP in this rant. I'm just disgusted at the way that the federal govt. views things. We are all just a bunch of worker bees to supply them with money. And they have got the media in their pocket making sure to condition people to think the same way.
Disgusting.

you can rant all you want, but there are perhaps only 5 people on this board that get it...
last few years everyone on here turned into a socialist for some reason, any mention of banks, corporations or even anything at all involving more $$ than they make, and the thread turns into discussion of "unfairness", "greed", finger pointing/blame and of course discussions of how they should be "taxed more" and/or be "sent to jail"...

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by woj

no kidding, lol @ people cheering on that the fine should be higher...
consumer would end up paying for it indirectly anyway...

what a twisted system.

[woj]

Originally Posted by BlackCrayon

what a twisted system.

How is that twisted? no different than fucking with a local baker, you fuck with him by trying to fine him, raising his taxes or trying to put him in jail, and he won't bake anymore or will charge more for his bread...

want bread? then let the baker do his job...

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Who would be the ones putting them in prison? The U.S. or Great Britain? And isn't part of being a corporation the very fact that you are not PERSONALLY responsible for things just like this? I know when I opened my corp. it was for tax reasons...but I was also told that it protected me from being sued personally (like if someone was in my office and got hurt).

Jurisdiction is very easy to establish, in fact it is likely that both the US and the UK could prosecute agents of BP. As for 'protection', being incorporated does not protect you from any criminal prosecution whatsoever. It protects you to a small degree from being sued personally (many institutions now require waivers before lending to a corp etc...) but it has ZERO impact on criminal prosecution. If you shoot someone in your office... saying the company owns the office doesn't protect you from a murder charge personally.

What BP did was not accidental, it wasn't even just negligence... it was willful neglect and recklessness in which executives at the company made the decision to skimp on safety measures as a method of increasing profits. Their decision to do that should make them personally liable for criminal prosecution and jail time... no differently than Enron executives being held criminally accountable.

I'm not sure you can throw people in prison for making a wrong judgement call (especially if it's a corporate decision)?

Yes, you can... and in this instance it would be even easier. They didn't make a wrong judgement call... they intentionally took steps to make things less safe and failed to have measures in place to protect the public from their antics as a way of increasing profits. This is *exactly* the kind of thing that executives should be jailed for to brighten the line between intelligently seeking profits and doing incredibly harmful things that damage the public for the sake of share prices.

[Johny Traffic]

Originally Posted by woj

How is that twisted? no different than fucking with a local baker, you fuck with him by trying to fine him, raising his taxes or trying to put him in jail, and he won't bake anymore or will charge more for his bread...

want bread? then let the baker do his job...

[Scott McD]

Still makes me so angry to this day

[Johny Traffic]

Originally Posted by Scott McD

Still makes me so angry to this day

reminds me to put penguins on the shopping list for the kids packed lunches

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by woj

you can rant all you want, but there are perhaps only 5 people on this board that get it... last few years everyone on here turned into a socialist for some reason, any mention of banks, corporations or even anything at all involving more $$ than they make, and the thread turns into discussion of "unfairness", "greed", finger pointing/blame and of course discussions of how they should be "taxed more" and/or be "sent to jail"...

I am all for making a profit... I run a business with that same goal. Not destroying the entire Gulf ecosystem is a pretty low standard to set for protecting the public good. Seeking a profit does not mean doing so at the complete exclusion of laws, regulations and the public good. They got fined 4B and quickly accepted their guilt because of how badly they fucked up... and they are fine with that because *everyone* agrees what they did was wrong. The problem is the fine is going to be passed on to consumers and the asshats who did this will go on doing the same kind of things in the future. We are giving them an incentive to misbehave.

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by woj

How is that twisted? no different than fucking with a local baker, you fuck with him by trying to fine him, raising his taxes or trying to put him in jail, and he won't bake anymore or will charge more for his bread...

want bread? then let the baker do his job...

unless that baker has a monopoly in the baking industry like BP does, where you are basically forced to buy from him, it doesn't work. the baker raises his prices, he will lose business to another bakery down the street. companies like bp have zero accountability when any kind of punishment just gets passed onto the consumer. there is very little incentive to give a fuck. perhaps the baker shouldn't be in business if he is going to run things so poorly he's getting fines for fucking up the enviroment.

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by Scott McD

Still makes me so angry to this day

come on now, woj says this is capitalism! if it makes you mad you are a jealous socialist.

[woj]

Originally Posted by BlackCrayon

come on now, woj says this is capitalism! if it makes you mad you are a jealous socialist.

it was an unfortunate accident...

we all want cheap gas, so companies like BP deliver that to us at a lowest possible cost... in some cases this may lead to cutting corners, which increase chances of a disaster like we just experienced...

would you rather pay $5/gallon and ensure a disaster like that is less likely to happen?
or would you rather pay $4/gallon like you are paying now? Someone has to pay for the safety features/inspections/etc and that someone is the customer...

it's easy to point fingers at someone else when something goes wrong, but we are the ones that are demanding gas at the lowest possible cost...

[BlackCrayon]

Originally Posted by woj

it was an unfortunate accident...

we all want cheap gas, so companies like BP deliver that to us at a lowest possible cost... in some cases this may lead to cutting corners, which increase chances of a disaster like we just experienced...

would you rather pay $5/gallon and ensure a disaster like that is less likely to happen?
or would you rather pay $4/gallon like you are paying now? Someone has to pay for the safety features/inspections/etc and that someone is the customer...

it's easy to point fingers at someone else when something goes wrong, but we are the ones that are demanding gas at the lowest possible cost...

I am paying more than $5 a gallon already as I am in Canada but regardless, the fact is they don't need to raise prices to justify spending a few hundred million more on better safeguards. while their profit margins are thin the sheer volume they sell makes them such a huge profit, its like spitting in the consumers face when they feel they have to pass fines or better safeguards or whatever on instead of losing .2% profit in a quarter.

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by woj

it was an unfortunate accident...

Not according to prosecutors or BP.

People and companies are not fined 4 Billion dollars for 'unfortunate accidents.' People do not plead guilty to 4B fines if what happened was accidental. If this was an accident it would be tragic but nothing punitive would be needed. The fact that it was NOT an accident is what makes preventing similar bad acts in the future so imperative.

The oil spill did not have to happen. It should not have happened. If they followed the safety protocols in place already it would not have happened. They made a willful decision to ignore safety in favor of earning greater profit. That is why the spill happened, why they agreed to a 4B fine and why they should have a bunch of people responsible on their way to prison.

[Relentless]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/bu...6.html?hp&_r=0

As part of the settlement, BP agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect related to the deaths of 11 people in the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010, which released millions of barrels of oil into the gulf over the course of the next few months.

The Justice Department also filed criminal charges against three BP employees on Thursday.

The government charged the top BP officers aboard the drilling rig, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, with manslaughter in connection with each of the men who died, alleging that they were negligent in supervising tests before the well blowout and explosion that destroyed the rig.

Prosecutors also charged BP’s former vice president for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, David Rainey, with obstruction of Congress and making false statements about the rate at which oil was spilling from the well.

This was NOT an accident... and those 3 people did not act on their own.

Brian Gilvary, BP’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts that the board weighed the balance between the settlement struck with the government and the prospect of a much wider criminal indictment that would have involved more people in the company. “A criminal indictment would have been a huge distraction,” he said.

They paid 4B (which will get added onto consumer costs) to avoid a larger criminal indictment that would have put more asshats in prison. They should not have been offered that option.

[PornMD]

Originally Posted by Relentless

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/bu...6.html?hp&_r=0





This was NOT an accident... and those 3 people did not act on their own.



They paid 4B (which will get added onto consumer costs) to avoid a larger criminal indictment that would have put more asshats in prison. They should not have been offered that option.

Precisely. I do think it's pretty obvious that both this fine will hurt them more than the money itself AND that they've paid plenty otherwise, but for some to imply they shouldn't be fined at all given what they did is ridiculous.

I don't know if that fine is necessarily "too low" given the other costs and consequences they've already faces on their own before the fine. Unfortunately, it's true that the cost will simply be passed on to us consumers, as it always is. Prices always quick to go up, slow to go down.

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by PornMD

Unfortunately, it's true that the cost will simply be passed on to us consumers, as it always is.

They cant pass on a jail sentence to consumers. That's why 3 year prison terms are a disincentive and 4B fines really are not.

[Robbie]

Again...devil's advocate:

The oil companies want to drill much closer to shore. Same oil reserves...but not having to go out in miles deep water to get that same oil.

It would be much safer and IF an accident occurred it would be much easier to repair and stop any leaking.

But the govt. forces them to drill many miles offshore.

So shouldn't the govt. itself be partly to blame for forcing them to drill out at sea instead of closer into shore?

The good intentions of the govt. were to protect the shore-line.
The unintended consequences were that it ended up causing a disaster for the shore line and the ocean.

Maybe if the bureaucrats wouldn't try to tell the experts how to do their jobs...this kind of thing wouldn't be happening.

It's just a thought I had about it. Nothing more.

[2MuchMark]

Originally Posted by Coup

I'm surprised they didn't get a tax subsidies instead.

they still are

[2MuchMark]

Originally Posted by Scott McD

Still makes me so angry to this day

So fucking sad....

...and people wonder why I want an electric car.

[Relentless]

Robbie,

If bureaucrats pass a law that says on Thursday anyone whose name starts with the letter R can only drive in the right lane and must not exceed 20 miles per hour... You'd have some options available.

1 - sue the government in court to have the new law struck down

2 - ignore the law and hope you get away with it

3 - start a grass roots campaign to have legislation changed

4 - move somewhere the law doesn't apply

5 - live with it and abide by the law while bitching about it on GFY

If you choose #2 above and are going in the left lane at 140mph until you crash and kill 11 people while making the highway unusable by everyone else for generations to come... You can't just throw your hands in the air, say 'it was a dumb law anyway' and expect to walk away without being jailed for breaking the law, going 140, killing 11 people and ruining the highway. You chose to ignore the law, you were speeding and you killed 11 people. You go to jail for that.

BP didn't get in trouble for trying to change the law. They got in trouble for ignoring the law, recklessly endangering the public, killing 11 people and wrecking the entire Gulf ecosystem - whether you think the law was a good idea or not isn't even a factor in reasonable analysis from my POV.

[Dvae]

Originally Posted by **********

So fucking sad....

...and people wonder why I want an electric car.

...and electricity is generated out thin air, right?

[notjoe]

Originally Posted by Dvae

...and electricity is generated out thin air, right?

Wind, Solar, Hydro electric dams....

[Dvae]

Originally Posted by notjoe

Wind, Solar, Hydro electric dams....

About 90% of U.S. electricity is generated by three fuels: coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Hydro is only about 6%. That leaves 4% for others, wind, solar etc.

[notjoe]

Originally Posted by Dvae

About 90% of U.S. electricity is generated by three fuels: coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Hydro is only about 6%. That leaves 4% for others, wind, solar etc.

And that is because of the lack of investment in those areas of power generating...not to mention oil lobbyists.

[Dvae]

Originally Posted by pornopete

Yes.

The amount generated is minuscule. Next...

[candyflip]

Just make them pay some taxes and we'd all be better off.

[Minte]

Originally Posted by BlackCrayon

come on now, woj says this is capitalism! if it makes you mad you are a jealous socialist.

I am a capitalist and it makes me angry.

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by Minte

I am a capitalist and it makes me angry.

The thing people need to understand is this...


There is NO overlap. It may look like there is an overlap but there isn't.
Just because an asshat says he is being a capitalist, that doesn't make him part of the blue circle. He is still in the red circle and that red circle presently supersedes the blue one, it never merges with it. That's why we have the BP oil spill, Banking sector meltdowns, etc etc etc...

When capitalists reject the asshats who are ruining our economy and our ecology, then the blue circle will once again supersede the red one as it should. The result will be a much stronger and broader economy less susceptible to crashes and catastrophes.


There will never be an overlap of those two circles... one will always supersede the other. Asshats do their best to claim they are capitalists, and all too often capitalists defend asshats as if they have something in common... even when history proves they do not. The BP spill is not a problem of capitalism, it was a bunch of asshats pretending to be capitalists while raping our planet. They put millions of animals and people dependent on the Gulf at risk. Asshats should be JAILED for it, and real capitalists ought to be aware of that.

[Evil1]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Fucking govt. thinks that all of my money and your money and everybody's money belongs to them 100%. And any that you get to keep is "costing tax payer money".

Congrats on finally figuring that out. People bitch about the huge greedy businesses, but they are amateurs compared to the greed of govt and politicians. And 98% of the idiots out there think the govt is there to help them when the reality of it is the govt looks at everything as a revenue source, use some of that money to keep them in power and the rest to live like kings.

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by Dvae

The amount generated is minuscule. Next...

But why don't we all move over to solar power?

A neighbor of mine had solar power installed in his house two years ago. He tells me he doesn't spend anything on electricity.

I also noticed we have a parking lot near us that has covered parking - stall like parking - and all of the stalls have solar power units on them. This is win win - It's getting hotter out, so let's build some shade for our cars and then generate some solar power at the same time. Brilliant.

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by Evil1

Congrats on finally figuring that out. People bitch about the huge greedy businesses, but they are amateurs compared to the greed of govt and politicians. And 98% of the idiots out there think the govt is there to help them when the reality of it is the govt looks at everything as a revenue source, use some of that money to keep them in power and the rest to live like kings.

When did preventing government excesses and preventing private industry excesses become mutually exclusive? You can think the BP spill is a disgrace in need of prosecution and also think the Post Office wasting 15B per year is a disgrace. It isn't an 'either / or' proposition.

[Relentless]

Originally Posted by Rochard

But why don't we all move over to solar power?

Last time I checked you need a solar panel roughly 1 square yard in size to generate 1hp of energy. To make a solar car with enough solar panels to power it at a reasonable level of performance reliably, the car would need to be about the size of a football field.

Solar, wind, etc have very important uses. Right now we are getting 4% of our power from alternative energy. People laugh at 4% but that is because they don't stop to think just how much 4% of our total energy usage really amounts to... in the coming years we will likely get it to more like 8 or 10% which is definitely significant, but it is not a panacea.

The best hope for real energy solutions remains Hydrogen fuel produced at pebble-bed atomic powered refineries. Unfortunately we are decades away from that and very little money is being put into the necessary R&D