Ok, I admit it, I just plain made up the part in my title about BP quaking in their boots. Probably quaking with laughter is more likely, though I can't actually document that either. Just call it an educated guess—or perhaps the subliminal effect of champagne glasses clinking in the distance.
You're welcome to watch the video of yesterday's Meet the Press if you have the time:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
But, as usual, I have transcripts, edited down from those supplied by MSNBC, and marked up so you can see what I'd like to focus on:
MR. AXELROD: Well, we want to make sure that money is escrowed for the, the legitimate claims that are going to be made and are being made by businesses down in the Gulf, people who've been damaged by this. And, and we want to make sure that that money is independently administered so that there won't be slow-walk on these claims.
MR. GREGORY: What are we looking at in terms of a money...
MR. AXELROD: I'm not going to...
MR. GREGORY: ...a figure for the claims?
MR. AXELROD: I'm not going to--that's a--that will be the discussion between, between us and BP. But it has to be substantial enough to meet the claims that we expect to come.
MR. AXELROD: Well, let me make clear that Mr. Hayward knows exactly what our, what our demands have been from the beginning. And...
MR. GREGORY: But what's the difference with the bank CEOs? Because they understood what the demands were from the administration, too, but the president got the bank CEOs themselves in the room.
MR. AXELROD: Well, he got them in a room as an industry, and he's talked to the oil industry and other industries as well. But in this particular matter we've had--our intermediaries have been very clear, there's no doubt in the mind of BP what our, what our demands are and have been.
The reason I think the champagne must be flowing somewhere at BP is that, by contrast, it wasn't long ago that Robert Reich quite seriously suggested putting BP into receivership. As Reich explains, “This is the only way the public know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.” So BP is surely breathing quite a sigh of relief that President Obama did not take Mr. Reich's suggestion.
BP also surely knows that every time the President makes a move that's more tepid than he should, it acts as a kind of lightning rod, drawing attention away from BP and onto an administration that, while it hasn't acted nearly as strongly as it should, did not create this situation.
Note that at one point in the transcript, Axelrod remarks that the aim is to avoid a “slow-walk” on the claims. BP has repeatedly promised to pay “legitimate” claims resulting from the oil spill. Congress, acting as the public's legitimate ally, and hearing the weasel words “legitimate claim” in testimony before it, has rightly asked for detail on what exactly constitutes a legitimate claim. BP has resisted saying.
And yet, unlike Congress, Mr. Axelrod seems to have adopted the term “legitimate claim” wholesale. Sure, it goes without saying that all claims have to be legitimate. But that's like when someone asks you how much you owe in payment for something and they respond, “five dollars—in legitimate money.” Legitimate money goes without saying. Saying it indicates you think you might not get legitimate money. It's a way to insult the person you're talking to. Just as saying “legitimate claim” insults the people who are likely to file. This is a big deal. An entire part of the country will be damaged irreversibly. It seems to me, though few have discussed it in the media, that the livelihood of several island nations, both in terms of fishing and in terms of tourism, is at substantial risk.
Legitimate claims indeed. Spare me.
And yet it is central to the notion of knowing how much money we're talking about to understand what kinds of claims might be filed. Why is the first order of business not to enumerate that? This goes to the transparency of process I've called for recently. How on earth can we know how much to reserve if we don't have even a guess of what's being affected?
But apparently, if we are to believe Mr. Axelrod, the very concept of a legitimate claim is not an objectively determined thing. It's not a matter for a court of law. It's not something one can just discuss. It's something that will emerge from a negotiation. ![[white washing]](/files/white-washing-120x120-bordered1260882778.gif)
See again the text I've highlighted above where Axelrod says if you don't understand what I'm getting at. It says “that will be the discussion between, between us and BP.”
The notion of a “legitimate claim” is BP spin, but it's coming from David Axelrod as if it were part of the administration position. That bodes ill.
* * *
Lastly, let me come to the matter of the word “demands.” This would be laughable if not so terribly, terribly sad. “Demands”? Really? If you have “demands,” then you just make them and then deliver them—by telegram or email or text message. The medium really doesn't matter. What matters is that they are clear about what is asked and clear about the consequences if the demands are not met.
A demand is an ultimatum, something that either gets done or else another dire action occurs. What dire action? I don't see one promised. A demand is like “Either you shut this down within 48 hours or we'll put your company into receivership like Robert Reich suggests.” That's a demand. A demand is not something like “Let's have lunch this week and talk about our demands and find out what you think of them.”
President Obama needs to pick a paradigm and stick with it. In spite using of the word “demands,” Obama is coming across like Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank, like someone who has never done that kind of thing and isn't really comfortable doing it. The rest of his rhetoric is more compatible with a collaboration, and that's a bad metaphor. One does not retroactively rush in and ask to be a partner in an oil spill. If the Republicans can tar him with that, it's not going to wash off by election time.
If you got value from this post, please "rate" it.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
RomanticPoetess
Sandra Stephens
old new lefty
marytkelly
oaxacangringa
CoyoteOldStyle
Salon.com
Comments
Your point about taking the focus off BP and keeping it on the shortcomings of the White House is a particularly insightful and important one right now. This is the sort of "strategy" that tends to confound Democrats over and over again. Dammit.
Many of the fishermen who first put in claims have settled for a $5000.00 check. It is long gone and their former incomes are gone.
Are they supposed to pay the electric bills with a promise of later money??
Who the hell knows when that time comes??
I somehow look at the talking heads in big oil and big gov't having a discussion and wonder what is said at the country club later while they all pay golf together and drink.
This is going to sound a little "conspiratorial" but it is what I think is happening. about 120 years ago, the railroads captured the Republican party (maybe earlier, given that Lincoln was a railroad lawyer and gave away millions of acres of the west to them). It wasn't long after that the the burgeoning oil industry captured the railroads - the very thing TR wanted to 'bust up'. The D's had the support of labor and immigrant populations and so things stayed essentially in balance.
Once the labor movement was much weakend and out immigrant population mostly had to stay in the shadows, the Ds began to lose power. So to compete, they sold their souls to Wall Street and the financial sector (under Clinton). The Rs have been going after that base like flys to .... well you know ~ once it appeared that the Ds may need to regulate a little bit. With BP, the second largest corporation in the world, getting their teat in a wringer, Obama may be cutting some back room deals a la the Rs and the financial sector (see Citizens United to figure out what those deals may be).
So in the end, I am not hopeful when I hear Axelrod mimic Hayward's language. People be damned, there is corporate money to be had here.
Ok yes I do believe in a shooter on the grassy knoll too.
He wasn't the person who can answer the phone at 3 in the morning.
Mission, indeed, I don't doubt that they are rushing to offer money these people can't afford not to take and that it comes with strings saying this is a final settlement. I'm just guessing. But that should be made illegal just to avoid the possibility. It's also the reason that the government should take the money from BP and offer it to citizens, not have BP do it directly wtih citizens. The government is in a better bargaining position with BP. I don't doubt that this is the reason BP has rushed to “take responsibility,” and I use the term lightly. George Orwell lives.
Deborah, thanks. That's a good restatement.
and yes, that word "legitimate" is a door you could drive an oil truck through
Then anger rises. How can they not know? How can they not have anticipated? How dare they? How can they face the people in the Gulf who lives and livelihoods may never be the same? How can they face all of us whose souls feed on the beauty now being taken?
I want Obama to be clear. I want Axelrod and Gibbs to be clear. I think, in fact, that no one is clear. I think there is no clarity and that is a disaster in and off itself. One has to wonder if the officials of BP know how to be clear. How long have they allowed fog to stay in place? Does anyone there or in the entire industry really know what is definitively happening and how, definitively, to stop it, to remedy it? Does anyone definitively know how long all of this will take? How can anyone know, definitively, how much it will cost and how many will, ultimately, pay prices?
I think no one can say because no one really knows.
I saw Reich's piece when he wrote it. He speaks so baldly and boldly that I often feel he knows no one could or would do exactly as he proposes, but at least he points a direction.
Perhaps the real tragedy of all of this and of God knows what else is the ignorance. What games have been played and did the players honestly believe that they would never be found out?
I read an interview this morning that Roger Simon conducted with the President and my sense from his answer there is that Obama has, at least, a sense of what he doesn't know and at least, I think, doesn't want to pretend to know what he can not yet know.
A little while ago, I saw a few minutes of an interview of Ed Markey by Andrea Mitchell. He seems to have some clarity, but only to a point. Who will be on this committee? commission? to oversee what is going on? How long will it take? How many layers of red tape face anyone who may need help and may have begun to need it last month?
My blood pressure needs to rest for now, but my inner volcano is firing up.
As for BP, I'm sure they understand. Maybe not about the oil spill, but about the business. They know PR and they know that every day that someone is not closing them down is a day of revenue they can pass through to stockholders and a day that the people in charge can get patted on the head for having held their ship together through this storm. The storm they're worried about weathering is the economic one, not the ecological one. It's plain from their press conferences they don't have any skin in this game. Someone should take their homes by eminent domain and assign them homes on the water where the oil is rolling in so they can wake and walk by it every day. And then we can hear their cries of I want my life back and we, even we not religious, can quote, “as ye sow so shall ye reap.” (I hope that's the right quote... it's been a while...)
I think if they cared, they'd have hired every unemployed person they can find and put them in boats and have them at minimum patrolling all that broken boom they seem to put so much stock in. And they're not doing that. If they cared, they'd have masks on the people doing the work, and they're not doing that. These are not oversights. They're very savvy about what they're doing. We're just being hoodwinked by claims that they're unable to do better. Of course they can do better, it just requires spending money they'd rather return to their stockholders. That's why the opportunity to do that should be taken from their hands.
I've developed a tic. Every time I hear the word "legitimate claims," I shudder. It's the word "legitimate." Like you, I know that this means that a lot of people are going to get screwed and ruled to have illegitimate claims--which is really shorthand for saying they're not educated for smart enough to get what they should have coming.
BP should be in receivership. Money should be flowing like that fucking leak right now, going to the folks who are suffering now from the effects of the disaster. I know that there are folks who were hurt by the Exxon Valdez who are still waiting for their money. No lie.
I'm waiting to hear what Obama has to say tonight. And he he damn well better walk the walk.
After reading your entire post, one single word stood out for me; COLLABORATION
Government by the people, for the people, etc. If corporations are now people, where does that leave us, exactly? I think the answer is clear.
As for those who have defended Obama in the past and are now recognizing him as a disappointment, "collaboration" was clear before he ever became president. His FISA vote was as clear an indicator as one could have had at that time, and too many dismissed it as "pragmatism" or any number of other dishonest or delusional concepts. He collaborated then, he collaborates now, and he will continue to do so, I think. I still cling to the idea that he two years left to clean up his act, but I see nothing to indicate he will.
RATED
_______
It is unfortunate that many of the judges appointed are industry-favoring conservatives, but part of me suspects that even those judges will be more fair than a White House that thinks in purely political terms.
Skeptic, the mere overhead of the courts will add a burden that means a lot of people who are due something will not get it simply for unwillingness to do the overhead. This is what's so clever about the BP strategy—it allows them to accept some issues and appear cooperative while discouraging or actively rejecting others. When those reach the court, maybe some will get through but BP won't care... they'll be playing the percentages, not the individual cases. I think the reason they're willing to say “we'll pay for everything” isn't magnanimity but a cynical calculation that their position with citizens and with the courts would be worse if they didn't, and that ultimately the same standard would be applied. By giving a veneer of getting along, it's impossible to go by simple rhetoric and it requires fancy lawyers.
The thing Congress could do to help is pass legislation clarifying that the Courts may assign lawyer's fees to BP in all cases where a case has to be brought at all. That would mean more lawyers with a decent case could take it on contingency and would encourage BP not to try to run them down.
The defense that Obama was the lesser of two evils is the most common. It's really the only defense that holds. Of course, the bigger issue there is that it didn't have to be that way except that the majority of Americans are either too stupid to recognize that, or simply don't care enough for it to matter.
I was surprised to see that California voters just rejected a bill that would have leveled the playing field somewhat for campaign financing. I can't even begin to understand that one.
Regarding the court battles for "legitimate claims", one huge consideration in addition to the cost of waging them is how those battles will be prolonged. How recently was the Exxon Valdez situation finally resolved?
Karin, to the first point, although he is noted for putting opposition people into his advisors and staff, I have the weird sense that even those are him sort of picking his villains. It's got a staged feel that I think is not insincere in the sense that he doesn't believe it, but nonetheless lacking in authenticity in the sense that there are easy villains and difficult villains. In a sense, it's easy to have the stereotypical villains around. They say predictable things mostly and keep you informed about the “standard” party line. But Obama has a blindspot near his own party and doesn't want to hear that he's out of line with that. He ignores Krugman and Reich and others I think in part because he already wants people to believe he's satisfying them. It's a little (to really stretch an analogy beyond almost all recognition) like the business of BP not wanting people to wear facemasks because then you might know it was dangerous...
You also made another point that I'll get back to another way soon, I hope. :)
It just seems we go from bad to worse, and the future doesn't look bright. Who's responsible seems to go up in smoke here. Who was watching when it all went down? Where were the members of our Press when that tanker spill that occurred beforehand was a reality?
It is so sickeningly clear. We are all in the rampant control of a governing body with its own best interests outlined before our own--let alone that of the natural world.
Rated
I quote:
"And we need to stop making the assumption that it's so vitally important that these companies keep operating that we will waive all morality and safety to allow it."
Where the well monied meet is not before our eyes. And they do it slyly apart from us as though we are worth giving the dig to--as in, we'll get to pay for any upset.
One thing that disturbs me here--why would it be in our best interest to voluntarily go into Iraqi territory if there were not more oil there? And not just that which had already been processed for use, with Taliban payoffs, etc acting like a tax against any real value of the petroleum thus found.
I mean, what had we been thinking?
In retrospect, I think we hid our heads in the sand, refusing to believe our own people did hurt us far more than any one little foreign band might do on its own or without the help of some underhanded business dealing.
We are so blind I think we'd pass out if it ever occurred to any of us just how badly off we truly are due to our ignorance.