{"id":25993,"date":"2010-06-17T12:29:59","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T17:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=25993"},"modified":"2010-06-17T22:53:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T03:53:27","slug":"obama-negotiates-20-billion-account-for-gulf-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/obama-negotiates-20-billion-account-for-gulf-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Arranged Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The one\u00a0ace President Obama had in his pocket walking into yesterday’s meeting with BP executives was that BP could not afford more horrible publicity. It wasn’t the law; it wasn’t regulatory power. It was the people.<\/p>\n

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With the announcement of the $20 billion dollar escrow account,<\/a> with no anticipation that\u00a0$20 billion is the limit to pay for claims from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the US and BP have come to initial terms on damages for the destruction caused by the\u00a0Deepwater Horizon explosion in April. Furthermore, BP’s shareholders are to forego dividends that were to be paid out this year\u00a0in order to help pay into this escrow account\u00a0for the costs of the disaster, and a separate fund of $100 million dollars has been set aside to benefit\u00a0unemployed\u00a0oil workers\u00a0laid off due to the government-imposed six month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

Given the devastation and the loss of life<\/a> in the Gulf of Mexico,\u00a0this sounds like ruthlessly cold comfort. But the captains of industry in the board rooms of BP and in multinational corporations everywhere are not sympathetic to dolphins, fish and working class people who live near or rely on the shore for their livelihoods. True to form, corporations, their shareholders and executives stay wedded to the bottom line, regardless of which country’s resources they’ve fucked up, whose lives are lost, and how much damage control they have to pay for.\u00a0For what its worth, to them\u00a0$2.1 billion\u00a0is\u00a0not too big a price\u00a0if they can just make the problem go away, as long as there’s money to pay it.<\/p>\n

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For those unfamiliar, an\u00a0escrow account\u00a0holds funds in retention and\u00a0accrues interest for\u00a0future payout to\u00a0a\u00a0contractor at the end of the project by\u00a0mutual agreement of the parties.\u00a0 Money\u00a0is released when\u00a0certain external conditions are met, like a well is drilled and flowing safely, or a rig is erected according to specifications. In the instance of this escrow account, the\u00a0parties involved in the disaster are not directing how the money is to be paid out. The escrow account will be independently\u00a0overseen by\u00a0a mediator who oversaw the 9\/11 victims compensation fund, Kenneth Feinberg, with a panel of judges to mediate on behalf of the victims in the event there is refusal to pay for claims.<\/p>\n

As much as we’d like to see\u00a0BP’s corporate heads on pikes, its actually not in the public interest for BP to dissolve or go bankrupt. BP needs to remain alive in financial hell to make money to\u00a0keep itself out of jail and\u00a0cover the costs of clean up for as long as the liability lasts. The $20 billion committed isn’t hush-up money given its\u00a0public announcement, and its\u00a0not going to be enough, because the true cost of this damage needs to be measured in decades, not months, and in trillions, not in billions.\u00a0 But for now, its a Band Aid. A start. Eleven people are dead.\u00a0The cost of the clean up is unknown.\u00a0Nothing has stopped the oil from gushing yet. There is no relief until the coast is literally cleared. But this kind of pay-in-advance move is unprecedented; those familiar with the dismal state of environmental law know this is a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

To litigate this successfully, if and when the spill is stopped, the courts will have to pinpoint the extent of negligence on the part of BP, Transocean, Anadarko, and the MMS, and that blame will be apportioned out based on\u00a0their contracts with each other, and their responsibility for the incident. We also need to watch what BP says today as\u00a0BP’s CEO Tony Hayward testifies before Congress, particularly in response to questions about how much oil is getting released by the current leak.\u00a0 There are fines established by the EPA\u00a0which can exceed upward of $4,300 per barrel of oil spilled.\u00a0This is why there were conflicting reports about the barrels spilled per day since the event.\u00a0That decreases their bottom line and their liability to pay out.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0his Oval Office speech of June 15, a very measured Pres. Obama, his lawyer hat on,\u00a0was managing our expectations for justice while re-assuring the people in the Gulf — who still need the oil industry to survive\u00a0— that they would be made whole.\u00a0 He was measured for a reason. The next day the president was to walk into the lion’s den to negotiate for and receive the down payment, the first of many installments from the very devil himself — on our new partnership, bound together by\u00a0liabilities, lawyers and courts. With this deal, government is now in an odd new relationship with one of the more grievous offenders of environmental and safety laws set by the government.<\/p>\n

Its a forced marriage of accountability, instead of a free-for-all\u00a0at the government trough.\u00a0 And there’s a lesson for both. Government has been too cozy and familiar with\u00a0big business,\u00a0so much so that the\u00a0dividing lines between each\u00a0have blurred, laws were ignored, and\u00a0corporations let off the hook to run amok with little political tempering since the Reagan Administration. But in the aftermath of Deepwater, this is what government and the corporations\u00a0are in for:\u00a0 the once\u00a0conflicted relationship\u00a0between both\u00a0is now\u00a0watched over, in the public’s interest,\u00a0by lawyers and courts. I guess when Pluto is in Capricorn, lessons about corporate and government\u00a0accountability are par for the course.<\/p>\n

For the rest of us, who can’t seem to get past our addiction to oil,\u00a0in the President’s speech there was a\u00a0heads up that\u00a0the clock is ticking on the way we\u00a0live. We need it.<\/p>\n

While down in Los Angeles for my niece\u2019s graduation, I was staying at a\u00a0Holiday Inn\u00a0on Olympic Boulevard, where a Ralph’s\u00a0supermarket was right across the street, within walking distance. I needed to get to the store for some drinks,\u00a0but traffic was careening\u00a0past me\u00a0at roughly 40 MPH,\u00a0and no crosswalk within a half a mile\u2019s distance. I walked across anyway,\u00a0taking my life into my hands. Cars were not slowing down. I had to stop on the meridian, looking helpless, begging for these drivers to slow down, and then ended up running for my life to get to the other side.\u00a0\u00a0You literally have to drive to get safely\u00a0to a supermarket across the street.<\/p>\n

When I got to the store, I asked the security guard at Ralph\u2019s for where the nearest crosswalk was.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cCrosswalk? What\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

We have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

Yours and truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The one\u00a0ace President Obama had in his pocket walking into yesterday’s meeting with BP executives was that BP could not afford more horrible publicity. It wasn’t the law; it wasn’t regulatory power. It was the people. With the announcement of the $20 billion dollar escrow account, with no anticipation that\u00a0$20 billion is the limit to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1788,1661,52,1054,544],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}