Thread: I guess BP stands for "Broken Promises"

No rants or rhetoric here; only a personal anecdote: I grew up fishing in those marshes, which I regard as some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. My wife and I recently had our first child - my son - and I sincerely looked forward to the day I could bring him into those marshes, just as my father brought me, his father brought him, and so-on for over two hundred years. Now that has all changed, probably forever. I don't really expect anybody to understand why that matters to people like me, but I did expect that no one would take that from me. In the end, it makes me think that our way of life has to be sacrificed for one built upon nothing but crass and conspicuous consumption.

Originally Posted by Gldbird1

No rants or rhetoric here; only a personal anecdote: I grew up fishing in those marshes, which I regard as some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. My wife and I recently had our first child - my son - and I sincerely looked forward to the day I could bring him into those marshes, just as my father brought me, his father brought him, and so-on for over two hundred years. Now that has all changed, probably forever. I don't really expect anybody to understand why that matters to people like me, but I did expect that no one would take that from me. In the end, it makes me think that our way of life has to be sacrificed for one built upon nothing but crass and conspicuous consumption.

I understand exactly what you are talking about. I have been in some of those marshes around the state of LA and it is quite majestic...especially at daybreak.

RIGHT NOW isn't what worries me near as bad as what repercussions this will have over the years/generations... Accidents happens I know, but if involved in an accident & fault is yours...MAN UP, don't assign a Public Relations team to try to hide the fault...

Originally Posted by shooter74743

MAN UP, don't assign a Public Relations team to try to hide the fault...

Tony Hayward at BP didn't assign a public relations team. He spoke off the cuff as events were unfolding, without the chance to reflect, much like anyone who has a microphone shoved under his nose.
He has been hammered by the press for being candid and in the UK his family have a 24hr police guard following death threats.
He probably wishing now that he had handed it over to a public relations team.

I'm not much for remembering exact excerpts or dates, however just a couple weeks after the accident it was reported that either 26 million or 26 million per day was spent by or on the PR team trying to hold up the stocks. I remember this because it made me sick thinking that the concerns were about stocks and not the environment. I know this will be felt more here in the USA, but it will effect the entire world before it's over. Yes, Mr Hayward may be "tired and ready to get this overwith", but I'm not one that will feel sorry for him nor BP. It's our coasts that are being destroyed right now...who's next?

I too am a Floridian so the issue is really close to home. I've got lots of feelings and opinion's on the subject and can kinda see it from a variety of angles.

Point 1: I'm all for accountability, if negligence or corruption were involved here, those involved (up to and including the Federal Bureaucrats) should be held accountable. The environmental impact is obviously horrendous and lest we forget 11 men with families who were just trying to make an honest buck are now dead as a result of this explosion and it would seem that some of the regulatory requirements were sidestepped and there may just be a lot of negligence and corruption involved. Accountability is good and fair BUT I really don't think with a gozillion barrels of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, that it's priority 1 at this point. Priority 1 is, and should rightly be, stop the flow of oil and clean up the damn mess! The government rattling sabres, ensuring us that they have their boot of BP's throat, and that they're trying to figure out whose ass to kick does absolutely NOTHING to improve the situation. The Attorney General going down there threatening people isn't helping the clean up one damn bit!

PS: I'll be waiting for my official admonishment for political discussion, in the principal's office. In the interim, I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to any militant, Birkenstocked, pothead tree huggers, kool aid drinking Obama zombies or Fabean Socialist, citizens of the world that I may have offended. What the hell, go big or go home I always say.

Point 2: Now granted this spill is no more Obama's fault than Katrina was Bush's fault but there's a certain leadership role that the President is expected to take in disaster responses. The regime has chosen to politicize the entire issue and use it to advance an ideology (no good crisis must go to waste, remember?). To be completely honest, it seems to me that BP and indeed the common folks down there seem to have contributed a lot more substantial effort to solving the problem and taking a leadership role in this thing than the President or our government has. Let's not forget that it was the wacko environmentalists that had us drilling in 5000 feet of water to begin with and who turned off the idea of burning off the oil. Certainly not the cleanest or best solution to the problem but I can't imagine that at least to a certain degree it would not have reduced how much oil made it to the shore. At least if we had decided to burn it off we would have been doing something while we tried to figure out what the definitive fix was.

Obama and the federal government should have taken over the spill response a long time ago. The effort to get this oil turned off and cleaned up should be priority one and should be a collaborative effort between the govt and BP. Once the oil is turned off and what has already escaped is cleaned up, THEN we can investigate, lawyer up and hold those responsible accountable for their actions. The regime seems much more focused on villifying BP than fixing the problem. Few if any of us would have a whole lot of sympathy for BP but they seem to have thrown a ton of money at the problem and shouldered their responsibilities a hell of a site more effectively than the regime. Bush was crucified for a 2 day response time during Katrina yet Obama gets away scott free for taking exactly zero decisive actions and even less of a leadership role over a month in! Someone explain that to me.

It's always disappointing that so many can't see past the blindfolds of their ideology.

As far as I can tell the aftermath has been handled reasonably well. The way I see it the people with the best chance to stop the leak are the engineers of the oil companies. And to my knowledge they have been working around the clock (not just BP, but also other oil companies) and their sequence of approaches seems quite reasonable to me.
It clearly has been the top priority for BP, as it should, because their cleaning liability is directly dependent on the amount leaked.

As far as the government's involvement, I think leaving the experts of the oil company to do their job was the proper thing to do. I just don't see how the government is better suited to stop the leak when they are not even in that business. And of course it's a political suicide because everybody from the opposition would be first blaming them for attempting to fix something they don't have any expertise how to, and then, no matter what they do for doing a bad job (the internet is apparently full of experts who know for sure that it can be fixed way faster and way better, and it's the ones who are doing the fix who do a bad job).

And as expected the government's response is driven mostly by politics. First they had to tell BP to prioritize the immediate payments to the people affected by the spill, then they had to show an outrage at the bad company and of course exert pressure on the payment of dividends at a time of looming uncertainty on the company's liability.
And that's what I think the government's role should be - as long as the experts are doing their job making sure that all priorities are set straight and are happening.

Not to forget that every country gets the government it deserves. If the polls didn't show americans think their president is insufficiently outraged, he wouldn't have to start saber rattling just to please them.

At the end of the day being able to walk and chew gum is a positive thing. The last thing I'd like to see is BP put their PR division in charge of operating deep-sea robots, or the government appoint a spill tzar or something.