Politics

How Bain Capital helped BPblow up the Deepwater Horizon

Greg Palast - Articles - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34

A Book Review by Greg Palast, for FireDogLake.com
on Poisoned Legacy: the Human Cost of BP's Rise to Power (St. Martin's Press) by Mike Magner.

Here's my bead on Magner's book....


I almost fell off the barstool when I read that it was Bain Capital (Mitt Romney, former CEO), that told oil giant BP it was a good idea to cut costs. The cuts would lead to death, mayhem and the destruction of the Gulf Coast (not to mention BP’s poisoning of Alaska, Africa, Central Asia and Colombia).

In 2007, after BP's criminal negligence and penny-pinching led to the explosion at the BP oil refinery on the Gulf Coast, in Texas City, Texas, the company brought in industry pooh-bah James Baker, their lawyer and former Secretary of State, to write a report. Baker is Big Oil's BFF, but in this case, he was horrified, and told BP to get its act together and spend some real money on operating safety.

BP didn't like Baker's recommendation nor did it like another report by its own consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton which advised the company to ...get its act together and spend money on safety.

When two respected industry voices agree that you'd better start spending and thinking while you're operating in a deadly business, a corporation's CEO has only one choice: find a consulting house of ill repute to contradict the others and tell you what you want to hear.

That's what BP's CEO Tony Hayward did. In 2008, he hired Bain Capital to say the company would be better managed if it spent less money. Bain used consulting BS terms like reducing "complexity," but it all meant the same thing: cut, cut, cut.

After all, Bain's motto is, "We like to fire people." The oil company then fired 5,000 employees in response to the Bain report.

To hell with safety.

BP read Bain's recommendations as the green light to chop funding. Of course, it was all done with Hayward's PR pronouncement that the company would now "focus like a laser on safety". (A laser, I'd note, is a thin beam surrounded by darkness.)

BP's Bain-blessed, deadly, insouciant cost-cutting was the deadly habit that federal regulators identified as a cause of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out.

That's just one of the ill-making stories in Magner's book which takes you through BP's poisonous history before, during and after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blow-out.

Much of Magner's opus centers on the Texas City refinery explosion that was a loud, flaming warning about allowing BP to play with matches and oilrigs. He begins and ends with the story of another refinery, Amoco's long-closed plant at Neodesha, Kansas.

At first, that sounds weird for a book about BP––but it's an exceptionally important tale, explaining how the industry hits and runs. Amoco closed its refinery decades ago, took off and left the toxins there. It takes years for toxins to kill, and Amoco's poisons killed Lucille Campbell's baby in 1963. And it takes more years to figure that out, which Lucille did in 1999, after BP bought Amoco.

Lucille continues to this day to fight to stop the rash of cancers and poisonings still caused by BP's dump. The oil company has done the honorable thing: it's gone after Lucille and her little township, attempting to smear, discredit and bankrupt her and the company's victims.

Lucille's fight against the petro-saur corporation is the big story of the book that you should read––in fact, that you should memorize.

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic, centering on Palast's own undercover investigation of BP and Big Oil around the planet. www.VulturesPicnic.org.
Palast's, reports can be seen on BBC-TV and Britain’s Channel 4.

You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here.

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.

GregPalast.com

ShareThis

OH9: Knowledge of what police are looking for not required for consent

FourthAmendment.com - News - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34

A suspect does not have a right to know what it is the police are looking for in a consent search, which is essentially his only issue for suppression. Here, defendant clearly consented by signing a consent form and even unlocked doors for the officers. He’s been through a police investigation before that was apparently fruitless and consented to a search there. State v. Chesrown, 2012 Ohio 2476, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 2175 (9th Dist. June 6, 2012).*

That defendant may have been injured in an accident did not affect the admissibility of the evidence in a DUI case by motion to suppress. That went to weight of the evidence. Even assuming the officers misstated their ability to force a blood draw, that does not require suppression of the search here. State v. Walters, 2012 Ohio 2429, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 2138 (9th Dist. June 4, 2012).*

While the officers never saw money change hands, they had probable cause to arrest defendant after months of investigation, wiretaps, and tailing the defendant on drug runs, always on a Sunday. United States v. Rucker, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78323 (N.D. Fla. June 6, 2012).*

OH9: Wad of money not seizable under plain feel during patdown

FourthAmendment.com - News - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34

A patdown that revealed a wad of money was not a valid plain feel because it should have been apparent that it was not a weapon. State v. Robinson, 2012 Ohio 2428, 2012 Ohio App. LEXIS 2137 (9th Dist. June 4, 2012):

[*P20] Here, the testimony is unclear as to whether the nature of the "wad of money" was apparent by touch during the Terry search, or whether the officer reasonably believed the "wad" in Robinson's pocket to be a weapon. Moreover, the record does not indicate that Officer McConnell at any point subjectively believed that the "wad" in Robinson's pocket was a weapon. Therefore, the seizure of the money from Robinson's pockets is not justified by the Terry search or the plain feel doctrine. See Maumee v. Weisner, 87 Ohio St.3d 295, 297, 1999 Ohio 68, 720 N.E.2d 507 (1999) ("Generally, at a suppression hearing, the state bears the burden of proving that a warrantless search or seizure meets Fourth Amendment standards of reasonableness.")

Plaintiff is a state prison inmate required under state law to give fingerprints for SORNA purposes, and he refused. He was placed in segregation for refusing, and a criminal investigation was opened by the State Police. He sued under § 1983, but he doesn’t state a claim for relief because the intrusion is minimal [not to mention that, as a prison inmate, his fingerprints are in multiple places and were likely taken when he got there]. Ford v. Curtin, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79439 (W.D. Mich. June 8, 2012).*

CA6: Arrest warrant made officers lawfully in defendant's place under Payton for a plain view

FourthAmendment.com - News - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34

Officers lawfully in defendant’s place with an arrest warrant saw a gun and ammunition in plain view, so the seizure was valid. United States v. Lyons, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 11651, 2012 FED App. 0590N (6th Cir. June 7, 2012).*

Defendant argued that one question from the officer expanded the scope of a traffic stop. The court concludes, however, that his shaking and obvious nervousness and deflection when the question was asked was reasonable suspicion. One question could be enough, but not here. State v. Smith, 2012 Minn. LEXIS 239 (June 6, 2012)*:

[W]e conclude that Smith's extreme shaking and his evasive response when asked about his shaking provided the officers with reasonable, articulable suspicion sufficient to support an expansion of the traffic stop. In essence, because we conclude that the officers had reasonable, articulable suspicion to support the alleged expansion of the stop, we assume without deciding that Ehrhardt's question caused an incremental expansion in the scope of the traffic stop.1
1 We are not persuaded by the State's argument that a question cannot expand the scope of a traffic stop. Instead, we recognize that even a single question, depending on its content, could expand the scope of a traffic stop under other facts.

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....

Obama campaign woos Hispanics with TV, radio ads

AP - Politics - Wed, 2024-11-27 23:34
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- Her Latin American background is clear in her speech as Lynnette Acosta talks about how President Barack Obama's health care plan could help a diabetic neighbor....
Syndicate content