http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4403399&mesg_id=4403755There can be disasters so horrible and large in scope that the response absolutely must transcend market shareholder pressure for market "incentives" and political strategy.
God damn it if I hear one more MBA lecture us about the "profit" incentive that guarantees BP and the government are doing the best possible job I am going to call bullshit every time I see it. BP has much more incentive to downplay and obfuscate ALL information about this spill because of the damage to brand reputation. What if the fuck are you talking about??? They could spend 100 million a day and it wouldn't fucking matter, they just have to uncork another well. Exxon is still fighting against Valdez compensation in the courts.
BP has the worst record of any operator in the USA. They have a history of recklessness around the Gulf and in Alaska. They have deliberately restricted the public from public property. They have lied about the flow rate and they have refused to release information about the chemical composition used in the dispersant.
FROM A SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE PERSPECTIVE IT IS A LEVEL FIELD, MANY OPERATORS ARE EQUALLY QUALIFIED TO MANAGE THIS RESPONSE.
BP is a general contractor. They manage pay and manage contractors. They have no more or less inherent knowledge about how to handle this spill then any operator in the Houston area. But what isn't equal is their motives and incentives that led to this catastrophe in the first place. That should disqualify them from making the being in charge and making decisions. They demonstrated reckless behavior that caused this disaster and they are engaging in reckless behavior in their response. Even local operators in Houston and industry associations are starting to ask what the hell is BP doing?
Finally - there are many essential steps to problem solving. Good engineering is not being practiced here.
1. GET AS MUCH DATA AS YOU CAN INTO THE HANDS OF SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS. Maybe we don't have solutions BECAUSE THE DATA IS BEING KEPT SECRET. Right now the entire scientific and engineering community is contemplating war with the whitehouse over the lack of data from spill. Its going on two months and the Whitehouse is still spew lies about 5000 barrels a day for christs sake. Even the most conservative unofficial estimates are 25,000 barrels a day. This massive amount means there could be another source of the leak than a single 21" diameter pipe.
2. GET THE BEST PEOPLE ON THE JOB. BP is not the best people. Past performance IS and indicator of future success.
3. LET THE PRESS DOCUMENT THE SPILL. Censoring the media and keeping the press away is fucking unbelievable. How any democrat can sit back and high-five Obama over this is fucking unbelievable. He has to say one thing "let the press have access". He won't. He knows the press is being controlled by BP and he agrees with this. He is duty bound to protect the constitution. But executive power seems to trample this under Obama just as it was trampled under Bush. You want change? Let the press do its job.; You want BP groomed PR? Keep things the same. (The irony is that the mainstream press will treat them as royalty because 1. they are rich, 2. they buy airtime. Its the independent media that scares the shit out of BPs dickheaded chairman).
Bhopal killed 8000 to 10,000. Do you think market incentives made a rat's ass of difference? How about Exxon and Valdez? Yeah - the magic of the free market.
AIG should be out of business, Goldman should be shut down, GM, Chrysler, on and on and on. Enron and the first S&L left Govt. with 150 billion debt. Wall Street bailout estimate is in trillions for all associated costs to Govt.
God Damn all the free marketeers who come here and lecture us about the magic of free market incentives guaranteeing that the white house and BP are doing the right things.
They obfuscated the facts about the Iraq war. They obfuscated facts about wiretapping. They obfuscated facts about Katrina. They obfuscated facts about torture. They are obfuscating the facts about this disaster. Up til this very day it has been an exercise in preserving Obama's and BP's brand reputation.
Both Bush and Obama know that if you control the press you control the message. If you control the press and message you can say what ever the fuck you want and people will believe it. BP spends millions and millions on campaign contributions. If they didn't, they'd have their ass in jail by now. Justice is blind all right.
Tell you what - how about you go out in the Gulf with a few thousand barrels of oil and accidentally dump them into the gulf. Then, you tell the government to go fuck themselves, you are managing the clean up and hire the coast guard as body guards and see if you can get away with it.
This BP chairman is an oily piece of shit. BP should be removed from office. The senators and politicians protecting BP are oily pieces of shit. They should also be removed from office.
I've been hearing about this for a month:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGAoU1H2gM&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/20/868145/-Why-Cant-They-Use-Tankershttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/25/bp-is-big-and-important-b_n_589675.htmlThe Gulf of Mexico is too big to fail. BP is not.