Second BP Spill Coats Partners and Contractors

(04:40:03 AM)
I hate that I am not surprised at BP's blackwashing of its responsibility for the Deepwater platform's oil volcano this summer. After sitting through hours of Congressional hearings broadcast on C-SPAN (god help me, I've got it on satellite in my car, even) it was obvious that Hayward and his fellow fuck-ups at BP were doing everything they could to minimize perceptions, of the spill and of their part in causing it. By the time BP's incident report came out Thursday (NYTimes article and BP Report) I don't think anyone was surprised when it basically said, 'Yea, it happened, but it wasn't our fault, so fuck off!'

And the neat thing about that attitude, that corporate stance is...they'll make it stick. Because it's the new American standard, and we're who they're selling on that position. We'll buy it, because, for all the lip-service our culture has given responsibility and accountability, we don't expect anyone to actually own up to it anymore.

I'm not sure when it started to fade away. John Wayne's characters always admitted when they were wrong, whether they liked it or not. President Truman said 'The Buck Stops Here' and became famous for being the little backwoods senator who went from contractor plant to food processor, exposing graft, corruption, and war-profiteering during WWII. President Johnson decided not to run for a second term, because his actions in Viet Nam had become too devisive, and even Nixon acted on the consequences of his crimes in office, the only president to ever resign. But it took him years to come close to admitting his crimes. Carter took responsibility for the Iranian hostage crisis, and lost the presidency partially on the actions he took and didn't take in that event.

But Reagan claimed to not know, or not believe, that crimes were committed in the Iran-Conta debacle, and his VP and successor, George HW Bush, pardoned everyone to avoid anyone contradicting his claim that he 'wasn't in the loop' on those crimes. Clinton admitted mistakes of policy but never those of his peccadillos, and the Republicans who hunted him never saw the destruction of a nation as a bad thing. And since Bush Junior never made any mistakes, he had nothing to take responsibility for.

But at least we can vote on them, and vote them out.

But BP and other corporations seem to have arrived at a wonderful point here in America. With almost no exception, they are never wrong. Their products don't fail, their practices are legal, their motive is always and exclusively to maximize profits for the shareholder this quarter, and that's the only thing a company is supposed to think about, isn't it?

If anything goes wrong, it's not their fault. GM failed, not because it fought against its own lack of modernization and its refusal to see the future, but because employees were paid too much. Lehman Bros. didn't fail because they were leveraged 30 to 1 in a market that relied on a perpetual-motion machine of always-rising home prices, but because the Fed didn't lend them a hand. The collapse of the US economy isn't because of thirty years of steady defunding of regulatory agencies combioned with the denigration of that function in government, combined with a religious aversion to paying the bill for civilization (otherwise known as 'taxes'.) No, it was caused by an out-of-power Congressional fag running interference for Fannie and Freddie. Not one person has been removed from office for starting the longest most expensive war in America's history. Because Saddam attacked us on 9-11.

Don't get me started on Iran and Iraq. See tomorrow's post on 9-11 for that.

The American corporation has become impervious to blame. The corporation is used, not to create something long-lasting and useful, but to shield its owners from responsibility. LLC means exactly that. S Corp is for that specific purpose. To avoid human, personal responsibility for the consequences of human actions. A corporation is a piece of paper that authorizes human action. It does nothing until a human does something in its name. This is why not one single person has gone to jail for destroying the world's largest economy. (Bernie Madoff doesn't count. He wasn't accepting blame, he confessed to avoid being murdered.) Experts and corporate officers can never be wrong because...well, because then no one would hire them as experts and corporate officers any more.

This is a far larger subject than a blog entry can do justice, so thanks for sticking with it this long. A complete rewrite of the corporate contract is in order, from its place in society and its goals, to how it is monitored, fined, jailed (if a corporation is a person, it should be capable of being jailed) and a method of involuntary death, for being a menace to society, should be defined.

But when you look around you, at the 'culture of accountability' that Bush promised, once 'the adults [were] in charge' as Cheney declared, notice that almost no one of any importance takes any responsibility for anything, anymore.

Ever. 
(05:22:13 AM)(05:33:38 AM)