BP: The Disaster is the Relief

As BP flacks try to stem criticism of Tony Hayward going yachting during the crisis in the gulf, many have surmised that Hayward and his staff are living on a different planet. That seemed confirmed by Planet BP — the company’s in-house magazine — which quoted a local seafood businessman as saying “[t]here is no reason to hate BP” and insisting that “[m]uch of the region’s [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams.”

This is akin to praising the “recovery” in Bhopal as great for the medical and funeral industries.

Below is the new BP company song:

Source: Wall Street Journal.

18 thoughts on “BP: The Disaster is the Relief”

  1. CCD:

    I don’t think so yet although maybe I am too dense as well. As you know I am a free market guy but that kind of crap as reported in the article isn’t my idea of a free market.

    It is too bad that people think it is okay to detain a private citizen for taking videos/pictures of a publicly traded company. And it is also too bad that the mayor or whomever is in charge down there didn’t have both the corporate thug and the government thug arrested and thrown in jail. Money doesn’t give someone the right to violate an other’s rights.

    Now for the what if: did the reporter have a right to trespass and can a publicly held company restrict photographic access to their facilities legally? And why isnt the reporter filing some sort of charges against the sheriffs office and against BP? Is there another side to this story?

  2. Byron:
    The kicker is this has the support of management at the Sheriff’s office, “Major Malcolm Wolfe of the sheriff’s office says the deputy’s pulling someone over in his official vehicle while working for a private company is standard and acceptable practice, because Wheelan was acting suspicious and could have been a terrorist.”
    From the * Correction/Update at end of the article.
    Corporate police state anyone? Byron maybe we live in one already but I’ve been to dense to realize it.

  3. Gallows humor is a specialty, W=c.

    Or as The Police said, “When the world is spinning down/You make the best of what’s still around”.

  4. Buddha Is Laughing 1, June 23, 2010 at 7:34 am

    “Aside from that, how was the show, Mrs. Lincoln?”

    OMGosh…that says it all indeed! I would say too funny but there is just no humour to be found…

    Did anyone else hear the rumour about a low level nuke? ….and what would happen to other pipes in the region if it were ( I hope not) attempted?

  5. Byron,

    Hey! All the other Parish cops (but especially the local city/town cops) are every bit as crooked as they are in Terrebonne. And never forget the FBI has a separate office in N.O. just to investigate/keep an eye on the NOPD.

    Popeye’s may do chicken right, but Louisiana didn’t get the reputation for corruption it has for sucking at it either.

  6. CCD:

    sounds like the good old boys of Terrebonne Perish are on the money train. Huey P. Long would be proud.

  7. Thats ok, they new projection is 2.5 million gallons a day until August or September. What the hell. Sharks and Dolphins are moving closer to shore. What would Flipper do? Call Bud he’ll know…..

  8. Buddha:

    I looked at the high resolution video of the spill and was wondering why they cant unscrew the top flange and attach a new 2 flanged piece of pipe to that and then attach a riser to that flange. I imagine someone has already thought of that but I wonder why they haven’t done it. Do you think the explosion caused enough deformation to make that impossible?

    I would like to be a fly on the wall to hear the experts talking.

    The other thing that I am wondering about is why they cant “C” clamp something to the existing flange with some sort of internal “gasket”. They could fabricate it on the surface and set it over the hole, a valve could be placed above and turned off for a small amount of time to use the pressure to set the “clamps”.

    I wonder how hard this really is to fix? I don’t even know what the issues are in working at those depths. I suppose the little submersibles don’t have enough ass to do much of anything.

  9. And you know damn well that Wall Street and the Big Banks aren’t learning anything from watching BP’s executives crash and burn …

  10. Proof, if ever we needed it, that audacious wealth carries with it no guarantee of intelligence or compassion.

    How as the play,indeed, Mrs. Lincoln.

    Kudos, Buddha.

  11. They’ll get away with it too, because critical thinking skills have near-on-disappeared over the last 50 years.

    The infotainment “news” media have made sure that all people know is that they’re angry after-the-event rather than expecting thought be put into about the future.

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