Of course Roberts did not say that as a new thing. The corporations as person has been around since the mid-1800s or so. Heck the idea of corp as having first amendment rights isn't new, the gist of the Campaign finance law decision. It was put in place by that bastion of Conservative theory, the Warren Court. Might want to look up the case law on the Subject before jerking the knee.
here's a list of other near misses
Never mind the money. Nobody from BP should be allowed to perform ANY function related to oil - not even gas up their own cars, until every single employee is tested for drug use.
You'll love this:
3-In-1 shrimp!
That would seem to be a very good question, wouldn't it? The immediate answer is no, he can't even do that to a US company, unless he can make a case and persuade a judge. In the case of BP, I would think it would be nearly impossible. Bottom line, no one should get their shorts in a knot, because this has a lot more to do with the usual Obama smoke and mirrors than reality. In other words, he's trying to show how tough he is and that he is doing something. In reality, whether it works or not matters little.
It's like the snap judgement to suspend all drilling in the Gulf. Not only is that going to force tens of thousands more onto the unemployment roles, it will have long lasting consequences. Rigs that can't drill here may very well wind up drilling for China any other countries that can and will drill. And if they secure a long term contract, they may not just come back to the USA so quickly.
If Obama was any kind of real CEO he would have picked up the phone and called Tony Hayward in the first few days of the disaster to establish communications directly at the top. Yet, the fact that he hasn't goes almost unreported in the mainstream media. Can you imagine how it would have been reported had it been Bush?
You're mostly correct. To smart people who view all political utterances with suspicion, it matters little. But unfortunately, there's a large segment of the population which literally craves tough talk from presidents, even though it's utterly pointless most of the time. Bar talk, in other words. Next time a nut like Kim Jong-il or Mahmud Ahmadinezhad says something stupid about bombing a neighboring country or some such crap, head over to alt.autos.toyota and watch as a few denizens become apoplectic because Obama doesn't respond with the type of adolescent locker room talk they were accustomed to with the previous administration. They conveniently forget that Laura Bush made her husband apologize publicly for talking like a cowboy.
WD-Grouper.
If this disaster gets swept under the rug, tony gets his life back and BP doesnt pay the ultimate price, bankruptcy and getting sold off piece by piece never to exist again.
the dont complain when the next disaster is a melted down nuke plant making a big chunk of our country a no human zone for a 100 thousand years and a global rise in cancer rates.
or a bio engineering firm has a leak of a new life form that freed from the lab kills millions.....
companies need to be punished when they make big mistakes like putting profit over safety.
kill BP may well save us from the next disaster
No, of course not, although the two do have in common government meddling in the marketplace.
In the case of Goldman-Sachs - and related - the whole sheebang started with the Clinton administration, amending the Affordable Housing Act, mandating lending institutions loan money to credit-worthless individuals to buy homes. When they couldn't make the balloon payment after three years, the homeowners simply refinanced their homes at a new, higher, value.
Ultimately, this Ponzi scheme collapsed as everybody who wanted a home had one and the real estate market stabilized.
Meanwhile, all these mortgages had to get bundled, shaved, and diced somehow, but remember, they were based on vaporous valuations.
Anyway, had it not been for the liberal dream of "every man in his own home," the recent economic set-back would not have taken place.
As to your question, Goldman-Sachs et al didn't make the rules and cannot be fairly criticized for playing by them.
It's likely that the $300 in a BP divident payment, along with five other dividend payments of an equal amount, will put a strain on an elderly couple's finances. If this couple has been earning $1800 every quarter from six diversified stocks, bonds, REITs, or whatever, they may have to give up Wednesday night Bingo.
Still, there are those who say flushing one-sixth of the nation's economy - or one-sixth of granny's - is no biggie.
In general, you are correct. But failure doesn't apply in BP's case.
Besides, YOUR food supply can be rearranged to be harmless - just quit eating shellfish.
Yep, and just as conversely there are those who damn near shed their skin when a leader gets emphatic.
While some emailed the Pope urging that George Bush be canonized for saying he wanted ben Laden "Dead or Alive," very many liberals got so exercised they started stabbing each other! With arugula stalks. While their other, more in-control cousins, screamed: "Be careful with that! You'll put somebody's eye out!"
We've come a long way since: "Kill Japs. Kill Japs. Kill more Japs!"
You're not very bright, are you?
Mackerel with Tar Tar sauce, splash of lemon.
(rant snipped)
I'm no fan of Saint Obama, but I don't think he is evil, just naive. (I do note reports that some of the true believers are starting to fall away, now that the honeymoon is well over.)
But on his own, POTUS can't really do squat. It takes 535 fools on the hill to either bend over, or at least stay out of the way. I blame them as much or more than the guy in the White House. If Congress wanted Yucca Mountain restarted, all they gotta do is insert a 'shall' in the appropriations bill. But it is one of those things that is easy to postpone, so as to not have to deal with the NIMBY crowd. It'll be a few years till all the pools and casks at the active plants are completely full.
I wish one of the Gulf governors would tell him to get back on his damn plane and go back to DC- they have work to do, and his campaigning for a job he already has, is tying up resources needed elsewhere.
aemeijers wrote in news:5-KdnYsCmZEiVY_RnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
It sounds like YOU are naive. After knowing what Comrade Obama has written in his OWN books,and comments he's made in public(particularly about the Constitution),and the Marxist people he's selected for "czars",how can you possibly think that he's naive? He's been talking about his commie moves and goals for a LONG time. The guy is a product of Chicago politics,and friends with terrorist bombers(unrepentant bombers),and chooses to be around "radicals and Marxists,as he wrote in one of his books.He KNOWS what he is doing. He's only naive if he thinks that it will make things better for Americans. There's a good possibility that Comrade Obama actually does hate America,after all,he spent TWENTY YEARS listneing to that racist Rev.Wright spew hatred for America,besides all the Marxist upbringing he's had.
you must have been living in Antartica,or don't read or listen to TV news,or are willfully blind.
Wrong. It only takes a MAJORITY to enact legislation.That is either 50%plus one or a supermajority,depending on how the legislation is introduced. You must not have paid attention in history/civics class.
and UNFORTUNATELY,we seem to have elected enough leftist and bribable "representatives" to pass Comrade Obama's commie crap.
I will give you the out that the "old" media failed in their responsibility to the public to fully investigate and report completely on a Presidential Candidate. If they had investigated and faithfully reported on Comrade Obama as deeply as they did VICE-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin -and her family-,Comrade Obama would never have been elected.
Yes,you ARE naive. Storage pools and casks are prime targets for terrorists,EASY to get at.
He's not "campaigning",he's trying to get his Marxist agenda enacted,or at least advance it enough to where it's not reversable.
Smitty Two wrote in news:prestwhich- snipped-for-privacy@newsfarm.iad.highwinds-media.com:
they're already oiled,ready for the grill. same for the birds. ;-)
seriously,much of our seafood is farmed,or imported from other nations.
even mudbugs.
On 6/11/2010 5:15 PM Jim Yanik spake thus:
Or maybe--just maybe--he's not a nutcase teabagger, as you appear to be.
"Comrade" Obama. GMAFB.
On 6/11/2010 1:47 PM HeyBub spake thus:
I'm just singling out this one comment from the rest of your drivel to show definitively, once and for all, that you're just a common garden-variety elitist. The most self-centered type possible. Hell, not even the Tea Party would have you, is my guess.
Yes, only the rich and successful should be allowed to dream of owning their own home. Fuck the poor; they're just a bunch of Darwinian losers.
So we can safely go back to just ignoring your drivel. Well-crafted drivel, I'll grant you, but drivel nonetheless.
I never said only the rich and powerful should own their own homes. It has long been the policy of the government to encourage home ownership, just witness the home mortgage interest deduction that's been around since forever.
But for the government to demand that people with no jobs or low-paying jobs be granted a mortgage by financial services firms when they are already spending 105% of their weekly paycheck on such things as wheel rentals for their tricked-out '86 Chevys is madness.
Name ONE "decent housing for the poor" plan that's worked as envisioned: Rent supplements, public housing projects, the Community Reinvestment Act, vouchers, whatever. Pick one as an exemplar of success and share your choice with us.
I doubt that you can, because if the scheme you name WAS a success, then all the rest would have faded into oblivion.
And, to set your mind at ease, I am an elitist. I hold that only those who spend 16 or more years in the study of medicine should be trusted with slicing people open, and so on. I'll complain about one thrown attribute though. No elitist would admit to being a "common, garden variety" elitist - we elites are, well, elite.
Now David, you seem like an intelligent person, and, as such, we'd be pleased to welcome you into our ranks. Enlightenment is, kinda like the Masons, a multi-runged process. If you can get past the first stage, you're well on your way.
The first stage is simple - you merely have to adhere to the following rule:
While each person is entitled to an opinion, he is not entitled to inflict that opinion on others or, in fact, even mention it in polite company. An "opinion" is a sincerely held belief not supported by facts. Now a nascent elite is comfortable saying: "I don't want to hear your opinion, I want to hear facts. By that I mean evidence sufficiently strong on its face to compel a rational mind of the truth of your proposition. If you can't muster facts, then shut up."
If you can direct your life, adhering to this principle, then you have achieved the First Degree Elite station.
Report back when you reach this condition, and I'll forward the secret decoder ring we all have.
And there is a long line of Supreme Court cases saying that the President has to spend the money (starting when Nixon tried to sequester money in the 70s).
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