One of Josh Marshall’s readers calls BP’s agreement to put $20 billion into escrow a “mind boggling accomplishment” on the part of the Obama administration.
I agree that this was a good example of the administration using its leverage at the right time, and I don’t want to take away from their accomplishment. But, man, is BP in a jam. Credible analysts are making estimates of BP’s liability that range from $40 billion to $63 billion.
With that kind of expense coming down the pike, it’s also mind boggling that BP was seriously considering paying a dividend in four days.
Also, too: I don’t see any evidence that the asinine “BP Bailout” meme is catching on. The latest stupidity from the RNC is an ad accusing Obama of playing too many rounds of golf. When that’s all you’ve got, you don’t have much.
NobodySpecial
It won’t catch on. If ‘Now watch this drive’ couldn’t move past the lefty blogs, neither will the dead silence from the media about something Obama doesn’t let them film.
dmsilev
Haley Barbour brings the FAIL:
“If they pay out a large sum of money, how are they going to be able to afford to pay the money that they’ve already paid?”
dms
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I don’t know about that. “Lazy Black Man” is almost as powerful an image as “Angry Black Man”. Think with your lizard cortex MM, the wingnuts are genius at it.
cleek
one could see that as BP trying to reassure investors that the company is OK, and that it’s still able to go about its business as usual.
bkny
bachmann describing the bp fund as redistribution of wealth … as if that would be a bad thing.
just ask the citizens who live and breath the gulf coast.
i can’t possibly imagine this gop effort to demonize obama over this particular issue will take hold — except with that old reliable 28%.
Linda Featheringill
The idea that a Republican is complaining about a politician playing too much golf is just so mind-boggling that I won’t be able to say anything intelligent until my brain recovers.
Hee-Hee. It is just funny. [giggle]
El Cid
I thought the RepubliTeaTards had already shifted to calling the BP escrow fund move, I shit you not, as “Chicago-style shakedown,” Chicago-style meaning mafia and not so much pizza or hot dogs:
Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA).
4tehlulz
@El Cid: It’s almost like they want to lose.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@bkny: Obama bought himself a fair amount of political breathing room cowing BP into agreeing with the claims fund and them giving up control of it. Let’s remember, the people who will receive this assistance/justice are by and large wingnuts from the wingnuttiest of states. Castled/Check.
Napoleon
Huh? Fill us in, what is this meme?
El Cid
@4tehlulz: It’s like they expect popular sentiment to be on the side of the oil companies, as BP = FREEEEEEDUUUUUM!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@dmsilev: LOL. EPIC FAIL and one of the dumbest and most desperate angles yet. He got snookered by the Kenyan commie, and spit up a mouthful of sour grapes in the form of a tired and thoroughly inappropriate free association with one of the wingnuts most tired tacks.
bkny
@Linda Featheringill:
i would think a few photos of the orange boehner might be useful.
Punchy
Here’s the big, big prob: everyone and everybody within 100 miles of the coast wants to get paid. Yeah, the fisherman, shrimpers, etc. need the scratch. But you’ll have taxi cab drivers, liquor stores, travel agents in Orlando, and swimsuit stores in Boca all looking for some green.
In typical lawsuit-friendly American tradition, everyone even tangentially connected (and many without any connection) will be making their case to get $3 mill or so, or some other ridiculous amount. Just you watch. By the end, every kiosk operator in the state of FL will be on The Today Show to demand his $800 large….
Terrell
@dmsilev:
Does Barbour really think that BP has no other oil wells in the world to drill from? Does Barbour really think that BP only has $20 billion?
And this guy is a Governor of state?! Unbelievable!
Anya
I’ve been traveling for the past 4 days, and I seem to have missed a lot. WTF happened? Has the nation gone mad?
I went to the GOS and the amount of craziness is amazing. They even have a diary from Olbermann bidding GOS goodbye because they were mean to him. WTF, did some villain release some sort of chemical in the air that makes everyone act silly.
Face
@Punchy: I think this is BP’s biggest fear — just where does the liability end? If one guy’s fishing biz is ruined, does BP have to pay out his whole crew? The liability claims are almost certain to become absurd.
cleek
@bkny:
redistribution of wealth…
i like the idea that helping people recover some of what you took away from them is akin to soshulizm.
but that’s because i always get a kick out of absurdity.
low-tech cyclist
Yeah, but as the fate of the Exxon Valdez awards demonstrates, it’s possible for a company to drag something like this out for decades, and then ultimately reduce the award to peanuts once the incident in question is ancient history.
The first $5B of the escrow account money will be available almost immediately, and the rest will be available over the next few years. AND this doesn’t get BP off the hook for the rest of its liabilities.
Massive win.
And even better, the GOP is complaining that he’s doing a ‘Chicago-style shakedown’ on BP. Awwwwww.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Anya:
Ha! Obama seems to have this effect of folks, left and right. Throw in an election season, tea partiers, and eternally disappointed progressives/not and it’s Barnum and Bailey’s. And it’s only act one.
Violet
@Anya:
Yeah, I saw that. WTF is going on? Why is Keith Olbermann whining about how he’s being treated on GOS? The guy is paid millions of dollars to spout his opinions on a TV show. And he whines about how a bunch of people on a blog treat him? You can’t make this stuff up.
dmsilev
@Terrell: I’m sure Barbour is well aware that he’s spouting nonsense. It’s deliberate dishonesty, not stupidity.
dms
Ailuridae
@low-tech cyclist:
Wasn’t it just the punitive damages that Exxon got out from under in the Valdez instance? There are downsides to having insane people on the Supreme Court.
In all honesty this is a pretty big win for good governance in general. Bring BP into a room, agree with them that they are going to be on the hook for at least 20B and get them to release that amount in a timed way over 18 months.
And ZOMG is that Barbour quote completely incoherent. He’s really a top 5 possibility for the GOP nomination in 2012 … Wow, just wow.
jibeaux
Lord amighty, that “redistribution of wealth” as the evil twin of “paying for shit” thing is annoying. I went to the grocery store and they demanded that I redistribute wealth to them before I could take the food! FOOD! That’s just un-American!
So anyway, here in NC we have a Republican Congressional candidate, a black teabagger lost cause, who has pitched the conspiracy theory gubmint and the BP spilled the oil on purpose idea. You might ask WHY they would do such a monumentally stupid and expensive thing, and I don’t think you’d get an answer that made any sense in a traditional linear thinking kind of way, but anyway, just in case anyone was worried we were running out of crazy. It’s really a shame crazy isn’t an energy source. We could export something for once.
Ailuridae
@Violet:
Keith Olbermann is notoriously thin-skinned. Nothing else to it.
Violet
@Ailuridae:
Rachel Maddow doesn’t post on GOS, does she? I think it’s weird when people like Olbermann post, or when political representatives post, unless it’s just a campaign-related type post. It always seems like some sort of an ethical gray area. It’s like tire-swinging or supersoaking for the press. There’s nothing officially wrong with it, but it just doesn’t seem right.
Punchy
@low-tech cyclist: Obama could cure cancer, and they’d turn around to the cameras and proclaim he did a Chicago-style shakedown on oncogenes.
4tehlulz
Yes
Hal
Look, I would love to discuss a massive, 20 billion dollar escrow agreement, but…
OMG! Rachel Maddow did a fake Presidential address, and she was so wonderful, and she should be President, and I wish Obama had done that speech, and this one time, at band camp…
Yeesh. Daily Kos is self masturbating at a fake Presidential address by a fake President. Barely a discussion on the 20 billion.
BC
We want the theatrics, the angry president going on tv and slamming his fist down and making noncredible threats. That’s how we define “tough” – loud, obnoxious, crude. But Obama didn’t do that – he just figured out a way to get the people in the Gulf paid without a long litigious wait, using a respected independent adjudicator, and had BP agree to it. Upshot: No cheap shots by president to BP, no cheap shots by BP to president. Same thing is going to happen with drilling regulations and with reorganization of MMS. Not a lot of drama, but the results will be there. We on the left are going to be screaming that he didn’t make the oil companies forfeit all rights to offshore drilling and those on the right are going to be screaming that the regulations are so tough no one is ever, ever going to be able to drill in the oceans again – but the oil companies will be able to implement the regulations and the chances of another Deep Water blowout will be lessened by orders of magnitude. Good thing Obama is thick-skinned and has a long view of governance. Otherwise he’d just say “up yours, mfers” and walk away.
Ash Can
@Terrell: Actually, it’s worse than that. Dmsilev’s point was that Barbour apparently couldn’t wrap his miniscule intellect around the fact that payments were going to be made out of this escrow fund, so it was money already paid to cover damage claims. In fishing for something, anything, to nail the president on, he pulled up a cruddy old boot on his line, and now he’s holding it up proudly and telling us it’s a trophy bass. He’s a fucking moron.
ETA: Or, as dmsilev says at #22, he’s just intentionally spouting bullshit. I can believe that too.
stuckinred
@4tehlulz: That kind of shit won’t make them lose here in Georgia. Just what these moon-pie eatin goobers want to hear.
jwb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: No, golf is not conceptualized as a lazy person’s game, especially not by the goopers and the media. That’s the problem with pushing that meme. At best it’s the game of the idle rich, but I really don’t think the goopers want to go there.
BC
Shorter Haley Barbour: If they put $20B in escrow, how will they find any money for the lobbyists?
stuckinred
@Hal: Self masturbating? Hmmm
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@jwb: You could be right, but I still think the public views a black president different than a wingnut one, or another democratic one.
There are powerful and ancient stereotypes in play that exist for African Americans in this country that don’t exist for the average white person all else being equal. A different formula if you will
Josie
@BC: Obama ‘s attitude always makes me think of that old phrase from the civil rights era, “Eyes on the prize.”
jwb
@low-tech cyclist: I wonder if the goopers has polling that this shakedown meme plays well or if it’s just the best they got, because really I see no way that this does them any benefit. IMHO, they’d be much better off just shutting the fuck up on this, though that particular strategy always seems to elude them.
Alice Blue
So poor, pitiful BP is the victim of “Chicago shakedown politics”? I really hope the Republicans run with this strategy in the fall. Sounds like a winner!
mr. whipple
I thought that was hilarious. Dood makes gazillions absolutely excoriating people (who most often aren’t present to defend themselves) and then gets slighted by a couple nutty comments on a blog, has a hissy and takes his ball and goes home.
cleek
@BC:
well, no.
look, it’s really quite simple: people wanted him to take charge and make it clear that he’s fighting for the people, not for BP. and now, at least to some of us, it’s looking like he has.
no scuba suit. no fist pounding. no nukes. no takeover of BP. no punching BP’s CEO. no shouting. just simple leadership.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: That being said, I doubt that this gooper strategy will work on Obama at this point in his presidency. Most of the press blatherings and even wingers have been complaining constantly that Obama is trying to do too much and should slow down. Kind of already pre dissed their own meme.
wengler
Obama must’ve put a fairly credible threat on the table to make BP pay so much up front. Remember, BP’s liability was capped by Congress at 75 million.
As for everyone and their dog suing BP for damages, yeah good luck with that. If it’s anything like Alaska they will likely be dead before the case goes to the Supreme court where the corporate majority will give each of them 5 bucks a piece.
And if the Republicans want to run on BP being shaken down, I say go for it. Americans love losers with billions of dollars that poisoned the natural environment and then got bitch slapped by the President into paying for it. And I know the GOP is so politically smart because the corporate owned media tells me so.
Brent
One thing I learned back in the 90’s when Barbour was RNC chair and Chinese lobbyist was if anything pissed him off, it was absolute golden goodness for the country. Win for Obie
elmo
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Obama really is all things to all people. He’s the lazy, angry, street-talking effete elitist professorial emotionless Chicago thug.
And communist. Also.
jwb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: If they want a racial angle, they’d be better off going after his basketball playing—except that it’s a hard game to characterize as lazy. But they could tie it into the Chicago-style politics meme that they push more than occasionally. Actually, I’m a little surprised that we haven’t had a number of accounts portraying Obama as playing basketball by street rules, or suggesting that he’s a bit of thug on the court, pushing it much like they did Clinton’s mulligans.
4tehlulz
@elmo: Your forgot Muslin. Nevr 4get Muslin.
Ed Drone
@Anya:
No, the chemicals are in the water.
Ed
Nick
@Violet:
It’s an open secret among those in the media that Olbermann and Matthews’ reactions were pre-planned. He got called out on it and he’s in cover his ass mode.
stuckinred
@jwb: Ever hear of cherry pickin? Basket hangin?
Sheila
The finest and most effective leaders get things done by allowing those they are leading to retain some sense of their own power. Leading in this manner at least provides some opportunity to those being led to actually take some responsibility for their own actions and perhaps make a change in themselves, whereas the iron fist only encourages resentment even if it gets immediate results.
jwb
@stuckinred: You’ll know the meme has legs when we get the long NYT Magazine exposé with a big juicy section analyzing his b-ball game as a metaphor for his (failed) presidency.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@elmo: LOL. and as is the case with desperate impulsive foes, the wingnuts have checkmated themselves with all the opposing memes. They cancel each other out on the drawing board before even entering the game.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
I’ll say this – it certainly seemed scripted watching it at the gym.
Montysano
@Hal:
It did bring into sharp relief the abject stupidity of our national discourse. Her first point, that there will be no further offshore drilling until there is verifiable proof of it’s safety, seems painfully obvious. In the real world, Obama has to tiptoe around this, while morons like Vitter and Barbour pimp for more deep water drilling.
What can I say: I’m a Maddow fanboy…..
stuckinred
Michelle had her brother check out his game before she decided on him. Verdict, good shooter, good D, gives the rock up. No cherry pickin or basket hangin!
stuckinred
@Montysano: You realize that the content analysis folks have concluded the speech was pitched too high for his audience, it was written at the 10th grade level. God Bless America!
jwb
@Sheila: Yes, except that everything suggests that We, the People much prefer resentment to responsibility; in fact, We, the People go to great lengths to evade responsibility. The only thing that trumps our attachment to resentment is our attachment to TV, which not surprisingly spends the vast majority of its time selling us resentment while comforting us by telling us that we are not responsible.
tkogrumpy
@dmsilev: Bingo!
eemom
@bkny:
It was when I saw that headline last night that I realized I can’t stand it anymore.
Someone plant Michele Bachmann’s mouth over that oil spigot, plz. If it were a normal person she’d fill up and explode, but her capacity for toxic slime is bottomless.
Two problems solved at once. You’re welcome, BP.
stuckinred
@eemom: She could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, why not the gusher?
eemom
oh and Olbermann is a pissy little overpaid hack. Also too.
I haven’t been to Somerby’s in a while — he must be in orbit over this.
Nick
@Montysano:
Except he didn’t actually tip toe around this. He said the same exact thing.
stuckinred
From just now
jwb
@stuckinred: Oh, but now you’re talking truth, which, as we know, has no place in constructing the Presidential sport as metaphor for governing. If the press wants Obama to be a street thug player, they will make him into a street thug player; how Obama actually plays ball has nothing at all to do with it. All they have to do is find one anonymous source who claims to have played ball with Obama once and witnessed some nascient thuggish behavior. Heck, in these days of editors no longer reliably check on their reporters’ stories, the anonymous source can just as well be made up.
jwb
@stuckinred: Well, since they firmly believe that our national discourse must be conducted at or below a 6th grade level, that’s no surprise.
wrb
Pure speculation:
I suspect the last minute increase in the flow estimate took more out of the speech than the headline (Spill To Be 90% Controlled Within Two Days).
It’s been said, and seems reasonable, that the time to pivot fully is when the leak is stopped. The speech was meant to be the place for that pivot. But with the announcement the time was no longer right yet the speech still had to go on.
grandpajohn
Well of course he is spending too much time playing golf.
Everyone knows that what he really should do is buy him a ranch that not really a ranch but a few acres of brush and then spend his spare time cutting brush.
Well not all of his spare time , just enough of it to get in some good photo ops of him being a common hardworking millionaire.
tkogrumpy
@4tehlulz: Muslin? Don’t you mean moooslum.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@stuckinred: Like Barbour, Barton is experiencing ObamaFu. And now it is going directly to wingnut voters in wingnut states. That is striking where they live and what keeps them politically viable. Can’t have that shit, not fair — sniff sniff. So their response as always, is to pull out the lamest winger dogma to fight it. But money talks, and loudly to folks who need it and are hanging on by their fingernails along the Gulf Coast. The southern cracker code gets easily broke with hungry mouths to feed.
Ailuridae
@Nick:
There is no way to verify the safety of off-short oil drilling because off-short oil drilling simply isn’t safe. Even in 200 feet of water nobody has ever demonstrated that anything besides a relief well can solve these problems. Now, one could argue that it would be “safe enough” (and I would agree) to pre-drill the relief well before starting the flow on the main well (as Canada requires) but that doesn’t make it safe just much less unsafe.
And, yeah, it is on the President and his advisors that they ignored most of scientific consensus and a lot of his supporters in wanting to establish new off-shore wells under the pretense that it was safe to do so when it plainly wasn’t safe to do so.
tkogrumpy
@jwb: Frame this. Hang it on the wall in the bathroom and read it every morning.
moe99
I’ll believe the spill is contained when it is contained. Not when some jerk wad from BP predicts.
Terrell
@stuckinred:
In other words, this Republican wants the US taxpayers to foot the $20 billion plus bill. And silly me who thought that the GOP were against higher taxes and big government. His party is such a fraud.
jwb
@Ailuridae: Well, I presume that like most of us who weren’t really paying close attention to offshore drilling before the spill, Obama discounted the real risk. I know I did. And his announcement about expanding drilling was, I think, clearly a political tactic: it was an attempt to get ahead of the usual rise in summer gas prices and preempt another round of goopers yelling “drill, baby, drill” in the run-up to the November elections. We might argue that even had the Gulf spill not occurred that this new drilling was not a good idea (I would concur and even before the spill, I was disappointed in the decision), but that’s not the point. The point is that the new drilling was a political tactic designed to give cover to Dems on the oil issue as they geared up for the election.
jwb
@Terrell: Just remember that “socialize the risk” always trumps “government is bad,” so long as we are talking about corporate and rich people’s risk. Otherwise, how could they be assured their God-given right to profit?
Skepticat
@stuckinred:Just before I saw your note, noticed that according to Oliver Willis, “Joe Barton (R-TX) just apologized to the head of BP because he was ashamed of the supposed ‘shakedown’ by the White House yesterday.”
He ought to apologize to my head and jaw, which really hurt from hitting the desk.
Nick
@Ailuridae:
Well, there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t safe, but that’s not the point…when I was in Europe, everyone there so of laughed at me at the idea that we would have clean energy with no drilling or mining, just with far less.
Nuclear Power has probably even more risks than oil drilling.
wrb
@grandpajohn:
And did you know that he gets government checks? He’s a young buck paying his greens fees with his welfare check.
Nellcote
@stuckinred:
That was totally shocking. I wonder if the media will pick up on it. The goopers on the committee are being really dickish. I really didn’t expect them to bitch at the Prez instead of BP.
Ailuridae
@Nellcote:
It is an amazingly tone deaf series of comments that really only plays well in oil producing states and districts where Democrats aren’t going to do well anyway. If you google on apologize Barton Heyward there are already pages of matches – it will be tough for the media to ignore.
jwb
@Nellcote: “I really didn’t expect them to bitch at the Prez instead of BP.”
Have you not been paying attention? This is a two-fer: they get to both bitch at the Prez and show their undying love for big bizness.
TJ
Well keeps spewing until December that $20 billion will be gone about the same time.
twiffer
@Nick: must be that 10th grade reading level confusing folk.
Montysano
@Nick:
“Continue with assurances” does not = “Stop until we’re sure”.
Montysano
@Nellcote:
Just another way to tiptoe up to “Ni66er in the White House” without actually saying it.
wrb
@jwb:
The expanded drilling was part of the climate bill and needed to get enough votes for passage.
Ironically we are now less likely to take a step toward clean renewables any time soon since now some senators who were on board now won’t vote for a bill with expanded drilling (and the firebaggers would go ape at such a bill).
So more drilling overall is the result of this spill and less progress toward alternatives.
T.R. Donoghue
I think you’re overestimating what BPs liability would really have been.
In non-inflation adjusted dollars Exxon is liable for just 1/100th (and even less if you do the inflation math) of the total amount of the original 1994 judgment. Large judgments never stand. They make headlines, they get appealed and the dollar amount comes down dramatically.
Getting a $20 billion agreement from BP is mind-boggling. I would love to have heard what their lawyers were saying because I can’t believe they thought this was a good move in terms of pure economics.
Nick
@Montysano: We’re not continuing with assurances, we were two months ago. Now we’re stopping for at least six months until we’re sure we know safeguards are in place.
Persia
@T.R. Donoghue: It’s not just pure economics, though. It’s future drilling rights, it’s regulation, it’s the future of their industry. There’s a lot of oil they want off the coast, and if they want to have even tiny chance at getting to drill again, they know they better act contrite and fast.
Lex
BP has retained Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group and Credit Suisse, supposedly because it’s worried that its stock price will fall so low as to make it the target of a hostile takeover.
Bullshit. BP execs are worried about two things only: staying out of prison and their own payout. As long as their parachutes are intact, they couldn’t care less if someone mounts a hostile takeover.
So there could be any number of reasons why they retained Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Credit Suisse.
But I will guarandamntee you they did NOT do it in order to preserve assets with which to make whole those harmed by their own crimes and negligence.
The question of whether $20B will cover it all aside, if Obama thinks he’s getting $20B out of those bastards, it had better be because he has already taken delivery of the money. In cash.