More corporate welfare ...of course they should morally have to pay for 100% of the cleanup and pay for any value depreciation of the homes and pay the people who had to move. God bless America and the mutha *uckas who profit from disasters.

Fascism works!

Gee, I wonder just how far we would get away with shenanigans like that in the real world where a veil, logo and the three magic letters CEO don't exist as anything more than a symbol?

weasel legislation.

And will be too little too late. The cleanup crews (if they get paid) and lawyers will benefit. Exxon will go on being Exxon.

will be promised a future high paying job at Exxon.

Now isn't that just bait to tell people to "do the right thing" (for them)?

Your government is in control.

kind and then the product is no longer theirs. Great. Seems to me that the banks are not the only companies that are too big to fail and too big to exist.

The Corexit made the oil less visible, some of it sank, thus BP could argue about how many barrels of oil it had to pay for in the spill.
Now Exxon can, legally yet, avoid paying into the insurance fund.

... it just fills me with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and helplessness. Futility in the face of enormous corporate interests that are only looking out for their own bottom line regardless of the human, economic, or environmental cost. If it were profitable to make the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Alberta into a radioactive slag heap, you can bet some mega multi-nationals would not only find a justification for it, but make it sound as though it was the only way for the country to succeed.

I don't mean to sound defeatist, but how do we fight this? What do we do? Instead of -eight cents-/barrel, they'd rather pay for an army of lawyers to make sure that they receive no fines (that don't even make a dent in their immense profits) and have to take no responsibility when something like this happens. Or Deepwater. Or the Exxon Valdez. Or the spills in Canada. Or flammable gas coming out of the water pipes. Or strip mining. Or sink holes.

Vote with your dollars? Short of buying your gas in Venezuela, I don't know how different the oil companies are from each other. They're all fracking. They're all drilling. They all make billions upon billions in profit (not revenue - profit). Meanwhile, the human cost will remain high. Temperatures will rise, land will disappear, species will disappear, our air will become darker and dirtier, all the while the scientist paid for by the oil companies will make sure that the discussion is really about -whether or not there is a problem- and never even look at any solutions.

I'm lost.

At this stage in my life, considering my current vaious limitations of money and easy mobility, the only thing I can find to do is write emails, and buy as little of the coporation's stuff as possible.

The way mega-corps work, you may still be buying from that corporation without even know it. Who knows which companies own parts of which other companies? Altria (former Philip Morris) is a huge tobacco company that formerly own Kraft. If you were buying food from Kraft, you were supporting a tobacco company. All their twisty little invisible ownership paths make it nigh impossible to be -truly- informed about where your money is really going. More armies of lawyers ensure that.

Lawyers gonna lawy.

why do they feel comfy shitting where they sleep?

and from enclosed cars to enclosed private jets to private islands to vacation.
No, they do not live in the same world, they live in literal bubbles of enclosures.

The words of the Beatles are even more relevant today:

In their sties with all their backing
they don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking...

Everywhere there's lots of piggies
living piggy lives
You can find them out to dinner
with their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives
to eat their bacon...

we are food for the rich

Who owns the crud crude flowing through that pipeline?
Who profits from the pipe's contents when it get to its destination?
Why should it matter what was inside that pipe anyway? It is now outside that pipe causing problems.
The owner(s) of the ruptured pipeline and the owner of the contents that leaked out, are responsible for the cost of cleaning it up, regardless of what leaked. The fact is the pipe did leak and has caused long term damage to the surrounding environment. An environment that includes a housing sub-division, with family housing. Family's with children.

If corporations want person hood, then the upper management need to be exposed to the same penalties as a real person would for the same crimes, including long prison terms. They need to be responsible for something besides hogging the profits and collecting golden parachutes.

There needs to be a serious expansion of consequences to "corporate persons"...namely, if you work for a corporation that makes political donations, hires or runs lobbyists, or in any way profit from the corporate activity, then you are CRIMINALLY liable for the actions and results of the corporation.

We will sooner see monkeys fly out of my ass, but I can keep hoping against hope.

then we'll be a nation of criminals.

Can we revise that to "if you are a part of the executive management of a corporation?"

That's pretty much what I meant...the executives and anyone in the board of directors.

You want to see safety regulations and compliance go stratospheric just threaten the bluebloods with actual sentences. I remember the total fear in the meetings right after Sarbannes-Oxley was implemented following the Enron debacle. I think the CEO of the company I was with at the time actually crapped his pants on that one.

god, can't we get an actual democracy?

Since this is not really "oil", but it flowed from one of their pipelines and they do not want to pay to clean it up, I assume that means they want it back. No problem, let's get a few hundred Shop-Vacs and leaky, rusted 55-gallon drums, suck this stuff up and dump it in Exxon's corporate parking lots.

Save the nastiest barrel for the CEO's private entrance.

and then wonder how our Democratic Party Leadership can feel comfy being shamed by a Republican that's been dead for almost 100 years?