Holder Emphasizes 11 Dead When Discussing DOJ Investigation of BP Disaster
While it is not news that DOJ is conducting an investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Eric Holder’s speech in New Orleans about the spill reiterated that DOJ is doing so. I’m most interested in the particular emphasis Holder placed on the 11 men who died in the explosion.
There is one thing I will not let be forgotten in this incident: In addition to the extensive costs being borne by our environment and by communities along the Gulf Coast, the initial explosion and fire also took the lives of 11 rig workers. Eleven innocent lives lost. As we examine the causes of the explosion and subsequent spill, I want to assure the American people that we will not forget the price those workers paid.
True, Holder focused primarily on civil liability and named statutes that focus on fines. But he also said that Department attorneys were reviewing “other traditional criminal statutes” with regard to the accident, which might include things like negligent homicide (bmaz described negligent and reckless homicide, as well as other relevant statutes, in this post). (This would be particularly useful, IMO, as an HJC hearing last week made it clear that there were some limits to the support BP can be made to pay the families of those who died.)
Mind you, as always with this Administration, I’m not holding my breath. But given the mounting evidence that BP was using a negligent well design and proceeded with attempts to close the well in spite of signs of looming disaster, I do hope DOJ gives due consideration to the deaths that such corporate negligence may have caused. Treating those 11 deaths with the seriousness it deserves may well be the only thing that might teach BP a lesson here.
I would like to see managers up to the CEO hauled in. The Supreme Court said they have to ask that their rights be read to them.
And designate that they want to exercise their Miranda right to remain silent!
ot comparision- it would be shocking if obama emphasized the 20 dead on the flotilla while discussing usa endless support for israel…
This is a real test of the administration. Up ’til now G-S, and before them Blackwater, have been the single worst corporate offenders in the public eye, but BP’s offense dwarfs them. Also BP liabilities are practically unbounded here. Will they be forced to do the right thing here? Finally? Will they impose the corporate death penalty on BP, and prosecute BP execs for the negligent deaths? Is that the flip side of the question: Do they want a second term?
Side benefit: Seems like it would give the US military direct control over its petrol supply…
You consider that a benefit? That gives them the opportunity to spill even more blood needlessly.
Well, that’s interesting to think about, but no, don’t think that’s an especially likely result. What it does do is avoid a structural point of corporate influence over military policy, decouples the civilian energy supply from the military energy supply, and reduces the Federal budget (therefore taxes) by the amount that BP is currently taking in profit and unnecessary management overhead. Those seem like positive results for long term national stability.
I fully expect that Holder will exploit anything rhetorical that he can, leading up to the 2010 elections. After rhetorical exploitation for political purpose has been, once again, mission accomplished for DOJ, it will go back to focusing its efforts on protecting assassins and torturers.
Bingo, Mary! It’s all for show and in the end BP will skate with minimal consequences because “this company is vital to US national security interests.” If the Obamacrats in the WH were interested in any kind of justice, they would seize all of BP’s assets, sell them off piecemeal, and give the money to the residents of LA’s gulf coast.
Lest we forget, the relevant terrorism statutes criminalize as terrorism any crime, state or federal.
Given that the feds have seen fit to prosecute, convict and incarcerate as terrorists the odd environmental activists who burned down some high-end houses and the odd animal rights activists who tied up some fax machines and freed some lab animals, both of whom have caused a minicule amount of damage, in dollars and cents, when compared to the devastation Broken Pipe has caused, I see no reason for not having the whole weight of the government land on Broken Pipe.
Hell, Broken Pipe has caused more dollars and cents damage, by maybe an order of magnitude, than was caused on 9/11.
Designate them as terrorists.
Seize their property – the property of terrorists.
Lock them up under Special Administrative Measures – the kind that makes their flacking into the kind of thing Lynne Stewart was imprisoned for.
Deprive them of their access to counsel by remindingeveryone that representing them in court, engaging in fundraising, giving them a drink of water, whatever, constitutes a separate crime – material support of terrorists.
Threaten them – if they won’t willingly waive their Miranda rights and talk until their voiceboxes fall out – with their families being picked up and thrown into the tender hands of the guards at Bagram, or of the CIA or one of those contractor companies.
When the full weight of the government gets turned loose on the environmental terrorists of British Petroleum, then I’ll believe the government is serious. Otherwise, we and the rest of the world will see clearly (as if it wasn’t so already) that “terrorism” is a label applied to the activities of the brown, the weak, and the downtrodden and not the white, connected and rich.
Go, scribe!!
Thank you! I left some comments about that earlier; worth repeating:
Info from Will Potter:
Will Potter interview/podcast here.
It seems to me with that “inspirational significance” determination the government has gotten into freedom of speech criminalization, as in unconstitutional. Since we’re talking about environmental and animal rights activists here, it also seems to be criminalizing expressions of empathy/conscience. Would love to hear the lawyers here address that.
Reads to me as Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
This sounds very ‘looking backwards’ to me.
“Treating those 11 deaths with the seriousness it deserves may well be the only thing that might teach BP a lesson here.”
Amen!
Corporate death penalty would do the trick I think and has certainly been earned — btw, while I like the idea of teaching BP a lesson, I think such corporate personhood is a fiction. There is no there there to learn anything. It’s a greed machine. Empathy and wisdom are just so much sugar in the gears and must not be permitted.
Teaching BP and its equally well-endowed corporate cousins in oil and other industries a lesson is one of the most important issues. Will this administration take seriously its obligation to rein in damaging corporate excesses? Or will it send the same message as Bush and Cheney, that enforcing limits on corporate excess is something they’ll promise the voters and do nothing about?
There’s a different way to look at the choice of Obama/Holder emphasizing the 11 unfortunate souls who lost their lives at the hands of BP.
It seems very unlikely that anyone with any juice at BP would be the one to take the fall here, even assuming (which is a stretch) the case were successfully prosecuted.
And by focusing on the few people who would be convicted of negligent homicide of the 11 workers, and downplaying the negligent homicide of the entire Gulf region, it protects what matters most of all – the money.
I say this is best seen as a limited hangout.
If Holder does do this, it would be a pleasant surprise indeed.
Anything that might make Tom “Leave BP ALOOOOOONE!” Donohue of the Chamber of Commerce howl even louder is pretty much by definition a Good Thing.
Vigorous prosecution, from Holder? From this Administration?
Like Banksters and
War Criminals?
Right. Wake me when it happens.
You’ll dehydrate and starve, your muscles will atrophy and tendons shrink if you stay asleep waiting for real prosecutions…
This suggests a good slogan for Obama, assuming he isn’t impeached before 2012: “Don’t hold your breath.”
Woulda Coulda Shoulda.
Change you can believe in and this time I really mean it.
You can’t always get what you want.
Oops, my bad.
That’s a good sign. Do I believe ultimately anything will happen, other than a few token fines? Not yet. Not even close.
Is blankingship in prison looking out after 29 dead in West Virgina, after holder tore him up? I don’t think he’s lost much sleep over eric coming after him.
Bu, bu, but the Supreme Court just ruled that corporations are people.
Lets see how fast they backtrack on that one, or create another ruling that says “only when contributing to Republican campaign chests.”
The Supreme Court did NOT “just rule that corporations are people”; that happened in 1886 and was really cemented by government action between the 1920s and 1950s, and probably cemented by a Justice douglas comment over six decades ago in the 1950s. Neither that position, nor the recent Citizen’s United decision you refer to have particularly anything at all to do with the criminal liability being discussed here.
My bad. Thank you for the history lesson.
I am referring to the Corporate side of this thing and while I disagree with you I am not going to make this a spitting contest as i have seen so often on this site lately.
I want prosecution of the evil-doers, I want Cheney’s head on a platter regarding his “Energy Summit” that excluded the press, the people, the environmentalist, and the minutes that remain secret to this day.
And I agree with all those goals wholeheartedly. And how. Just not that Citizens United has anything to do with the criminal prosecution issues here.
I keep riding an emotional rollercoaster with this administration – it will look like they are actually going to do something decent and my hopes are high and the coaster crests and then quickly rolls downhill and my hopes are dashed as I see nothing moving forward, just weak stances and kowtowing to corporations.
Good for Holder bringing up the 11 who lost their lives, good for Holder talking about forward movement on lawsuits against BP and their complete culpability in this disaster. Do I think anything will really come of this talk? No, not really. I’m riding the kiddie coaster now.
May I also point out that if some dramatic and severe punishment does not happen to the executives of BP, similar situations will continue to happen unabated.
Perhaps while AG Holder explores criminal charges against BP, he’ll also take a look at the criminal incompetence displayed by the Obama Administration in response to the consequences of the BP oil spill.
The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank nearly five weeks before the the first drop of oil washed up in a Louisiana marsh or on one of its beaches…almost five precious weeks to prepare for what they surely knew was coming.
So…what did the Obama Administration do to mobilize the available resources, both governmental and private contractors, in the effort to either keep the oil offshore, or to quickly and efficiently clean-up any areas of fouled shoreline?
Whatever they did, it was totally ineffective. We now have miles and miles of fouled Gulf coastline, and the oil is still coming ashore and moving ever closer to Florida’s beaches.
It’s hard to believe that the Obama Administration’s results in dealing with the oil moving ashore represents the best that could have been expected in terms of the federal government’s response to this catastrophe.
Maybe Holder should look into that as well.
Fat chance…
Jane has a fresh cross-post up: Glenn Greenwald and Eliot Spitzer on the Gaza Flotilla
“Mind you, as always with this administration, I’m not holding my breath.”
Just so, Marcy. But the price of playing bullshit poker, for both Obama and BP, is about to go up, big time:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/01/bp-oil-spill-close-to-flo_n_596988.html
Of some interest is that evidently, the clean-up crews have stopped answering any questions about whom they’re working for, or who hired them.
It looks like cosmetic clean-up employment now requires that you be hearing and speaking impaired…and this is one of the best indicators of just how BP is thinking about the whole shittaree.
The big problem with getting Obama to really go after BP, is that it would violate the sacred principle of not interfering with the new “CSA”…
the Corporate States of Amurka.
(See: BP’s telling the EPA to go shit in it’s hat when the EPA told them to stop using Corexit.)
The idea that the federal government has effective domain over the Fortune 500 is one that the repubs, and a lot of democrats too, have worked hard to, pardon the expression, “tar” with the brush of socialist- Marxism-from-hell. Cleaning it up and re-establishing it is something that probably will not be done…I suspect, to the point of politically sacrificing Obama and his administration, if it comes to that, as seems likely, with an oil slick now 9 miles off of Pensacola, and with Deepwater Horizon being the gift that keeps on giving, and with the West Indian Cyclone season now officially open for business.
The rising tide of anti-incumbency; the spinning-but-slowing shitmire-plates in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “recovery” that’s still in the doldrums, the catastrophe in the GOM, and just the growing perception that Obama is more valuable as the poster boy for a failed presidency, than as actual president, is dooming his chances for a second term.
At this point, with his track record, the question of: “Why should he get one?” seems fair to ask.
(BTW, anyone who thinks that the answer of:
“Because he’s not as bad as the republicans…”
is going to cut much ice with the voters, needs to attend bonehead poli-sci 101.)
Cheyney? The last time I checked, it was Obama who sat on his “centrist” ass for 16 months without reviewing the sweetheart oil regs or doing anything about them. Was it Cheyney who, some three weeks before the platform blew, signed off on more coastal drilling? Was it Cheyney who, two days after the explosion, released a statement saying that this wasn’t going to make him reconsider his decision for more offshore drilling?
Cheyney didn’t grant those exemptions from requiring environmental impact reports.
As has been said many times, if this were the bush administration, there would be drool coming off of progressive chins. That some of us are shilling for Obama and his administration on this, is nothing short of shameful.
And, Mr. Gallup is weighing in, with bad news for democrats:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100602/pl_ynews/ynews_pl2355;_ylt=AruOwK.FSWHPRffk.xShdUes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNqOGFycWJkBGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwNjAyL3luZXdzX3BsMjM1NQRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzUEcG9zAzIEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0BHNsawNnYWxsdXBwb2xsc2g-
Folks don’t hold your breath.
Holder is a repeat of Muksaey 2.
This guy is a corporatist…no one is going to jail, maybe…the shrimp fisher who protest BP…..but not the big shots from BP.
This is another sham.
Eric Holder is a corporate shill who will at most go after the middle manager at BP for criminal charges if that even happens. He has protected corporations for years.
Why Eric Holder Represents What’s Wrong with Washington
This administration has made it an art form to give speeches which appear to support the citizens while doing the bidding of corporate interests behind the scene.
If They Did It
Thanks, Marcy. Good post, although I have to say that you’re far more optimistic than me about just how accountable BP will be Holdered when the campaign contribution gusher is diverted back to Tom Delay & Jack Abramoff’s successor trustees on K Street.
I suppose the recent Citizens United decision might be twisted in The People’s favor if it goes to the SCOTUS and corporate personhood is applied in eleven first degree murder prosecutions with foreign terrorism enhancements. Then BP can sit on death row for the next twenty years while their defense attorneys bleed the corporation dry.
Or the administration could pursue their favorite extra judicial approach and hire Blackwater to relocate BP’s headquarters to Guantanamo Bay Prison.
“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Corporations of the United States.”
– Baruch Obama
Baruch Obama… :o)
You’re a wicked soul, EV.
I like that. :o)
Why thank you. I do try. ;-)
And since it takes one to appreciate one…I’m especially happy to meet a kindred spirit. :-)
“One person’s ‘wicked’ is another person’s ‘fucking awesome’.”
I wonder how many people on here got that? :o)