The BP Corollary
This is excerpted from my article of the same name whcih can be read in its entirety at http://hubpages.com/hub/The-BP-Corollary.
That article used 1,000 words to explore the history of the Monroe Doctrine and develop the logic behind my call for President Obama to expand it to apply to corporations in general and BP in particular.
In 2011, the United States finds within the Americas a foreign corporation engaged in flagrant and chronic wrongdoing which has caused and is causing the deaths of innocent Americans, the destruction of the economic livelihoods of Americans, the pollution of America’s vital natural resources, and the extraction of profits earned on American mineral wealth. In order for the United States to properly and righteously defend itself we must expand the Monroe Doctrine to include foreign corporations in addition to foreign governments. Toward that end the BP Corollary to the Monroe Doctine is proposed as follows:
BP Corollary to the Monroe Doctine
Whenever a foreign corporation with investments and operations in the Americas engages in flagrant and chronic wrongdoing whether through overt act or negligence and irresponsibility to the actual or anticipated detriment of America, its people, or its resources the United States reserves the right to force said corporation to divest its American assets, make restitution for financial harms to America or Americans, and to leave the hemisphere of the Americas .
Who made the pact with the devil?
Note: This is excerpted from my Hub Pages article. Please follow this link to read the entire formatted article http://hubpages.com/hub/DevilBP
Isn’t it appropriate that John D. Rockefeller’s flagship Standard Oil of Ohio would make the pact that brought BP into the United States?
After the breakup of Standard Oil into the seven sisters, Standard Oil Company of Ohio (Sohio) survived as a regional refining and marketing company headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. The entire company was worth less than $800 million when BP purchased a stake and merged in its BP Pipeline Company. Sohio set out on its own to build TAPS (Trans Alaskan Pipeline System). By the time the pipeline was complete and the oil was flowing 800 miles to Valdez from the Prudhoe Bay fields, Sohio was worth nearly $8 billion. BP purchased the remaining shares and BP America became one of the largest US oil companies.
A great many Sohio employees who had their retirements invested in company stock became millionaires when BP bought out Sohio. During the years I worked for BP America, most accepted buyout packages rather than continue to watch their beloved Sohio absorbed and corrupted by BP. Just before I was totally corrupted myself, I had a change of heart and revolted. I expected the defection of one insignificant financial analyst would go unnoticed by the evil giant, but the devil hates to lose even one soul.
I wrote my novel, Involuntary Separation, to expose the evil practices. Fearing personal liability I couched my accusations in the guise of fiction. I naively expected people would readily get my message and understand my Moon Oil Company was really BP and that BP really did the evil things I described. That didn’t happen. This time around I’m coming right out and stating it as fact. Still, people won’t accept it.
BP kills American citizens and pollutes our greatest resources and walks away unpunished. Just as John D’s philanthropy erased all memory of the evil he perpetrated on the nation, a slick and expensive PR campaign is cleaning the BP image in the collective minds of the masses. The BP strategy is simple: Tell a lie often enough on nightly TV and the American people will accept it.
This country did have the backbone to stop John D and break up his evil empire and we can still rise up and punish BP. Congressional hearings are approaching. The BP strategy will be to spread the blame and admit no wrong doing. The company has enough law makers in its pocket to get away with it. There was a time when I thought the collective outrage of the American people would force Washington to act, but BP is winning that fight.
Many people regularly express amazement that BP has not initiated legal action and I have not received a cease and desist order. My answer is simple. Courts are reluctant to stifle the truth without a hearing and BP is afraid to engage me in open court.
Can the truth overcome the hundreds of millions of oil dollars spent perpetuating the lie? I’m a novelist I understand that truth is often stranger than fiction. Evil and BP will likely win but they may well lose. Stranger things have happened and the devil may yet be exorcised.
The FACE of Evil Exposed
There has been a lot of interest to the blog titled "Guiding Hand of BP Evil Exposed." Those of you who want to learn more and to actually see a picture of the man please use the above link.
BP Places Gulf Assets Out of Reach of Oil Spill Trust
(Note: Read the Entire article with pictures at http://hubpages.com/hub/BPpledgesCollateral)
Today’s Wall Street Journal headline reads “BP Pledges Assets as Gulf Oil Spill Collateral.” The article goes on the say that the “pledged collateral consists of an overriding royalty interest in oil and gas production at BP's Thunder Horse, Atlantis, Mad Dog, Great White and Mars, Ursa and Na Kika oil and gas assets in the Gulf of Mexico.” The move is good for the BP stock price but it is just another in the long list of deceptions fostered on oil spill victims and the American public.
The strategy is clear to those who understand the inherent devious nature of the company. BP had a similar arrangement with an investment vehicle it called the Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust which paid “an overriding royalty interest” in revenue from its Alaskan fields. It sold shares in the trust to investors and pocketed the money. The trust only paid investors after BP itself had earned its return. Investors who bought the trust were gambling that the price of crude oil would rise above BP’s own price expectations.
Contrary to what the Wall Street Journal headline implies, BP is not pledging those very valuable assets in the sense that America could seize and sell them to satisfy claims. On the contrary, BP is only pledging the excess profit it might earn on those assets. It will only earn that profit as long as the price it receives for the oil and gas produced exceeds all the costs it can attribute to those wells and some profit percentage not specified in the article. Taking it one step further, BP will earn profits sufficient to contribute to the cost of the spill provided American consumers pay a price at the pump sufficient for BP to recover all its costs and earn whatever profit it deems appropriate.
Beyond the fact that the collateral is worth nothing to the victims of the spill, pledging even this tiny interest in those particular wells may have the effect of protecting them from legal claims.
The bottom line in today’s news as has been the case from the beginning is that the strategy works for BP and against America. It is yet another test of the gullibility of the American public and its leaders. We can expect to hear a BP spokesperson proclaiming that BP is pledging these valuable assets to the oil spill fund. Will America be fooled again?
Guiding Hand of BP Evil Exposed
Note: Read entire article with pictures at http://hubpages.com/hub/BP-Evil-Exposed)
BP put profits ahead of safety resulting in the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history. That much is a given. This article will identify the source of the problem inside BP and offer a solution.
The BP Chief Executive Officer, Tony Hayward, truthfully testified before congress that he was not involved in the decision making that resulted in the disaster, yet we are supposed to be satisfied the problem can be solved by replacing him. After the BP refinery explosion killed American workers he told us as the then incoming CEO that he would change things at BP and put safety ahead of profits. That was an admission that BP had been operating with a profits-first corporate directive. Now in the aftermath of the oil rig explosion that killed more Americans and devastated a large portion of our treasured environment we are to be reassured by another incoming CEO who tells us he will change the BP corporate culture to put safety ahead of profits. That is fresh admission that BP had continued operating with a profits-first directive under a CEO who had promised to change it. This time we are given an extra added touch; this newest CEO is an American citizen. We many be gullible as a nation, but we are not insane. We will not believe the same strategy will yield different results this time. We are correct in our intuitive disbelief and this article will provide the proof we need to act on that disbelief.
The one thing a reasonable American public can conclude from the fact that changing the CEO did not fix the problem is that the source of the problem is higher and deeper than the CEO position. In this instance the source is even higher and deeper than the current Chairman of the Board. The source is the unseen guiding hand of the previous Chairman of the Board, Lord Ashburton (formerly John Baring). He corrupted the BP corporate culture in the 1990s and the company has operated since as it did then. The only answer is that his unseen guiding hand is still very much in charge.
Many readers may recall the failure of Britain’s Barings Bank in 1995. The failure came under the watch of the same man, John Baring, the 7th Lord Ashburton. A rogue trader was blamed. The point is that an important international financial institution that had survived for hundreds of years is now gone and that it failed with this same guiding hand at the controls.
Americans will find it difficult to accept that one man can have that kind of power. The insert below will satisfy even the most skeptical. The British are already well aware of the power this man and his ancestors have wielded, literally for centuries. There was an expression in England in the early 1900s that summed it up. It claimed there were six main powers in Europe: England, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Prussia, and the Baring Brothers. This generations old foreign power is our national problem.
There are descriptions of Lord Ashburton and his methods written by a BP insider with considerable license in the 2002 novel Involuntary Separation, Corporate Downsizing Gone Fatally Wrong in which he is depicted as the evil Lord Debauchton. The insert below provides evidence of his power and connections.
The fact that BP is under the control of an evil, unseen guiding hand makes it entirely unanswerable and unfixable. We can not negotiate with the man behind the curtain who denies he is at the controls. This national dilemma has an obvious answer. Once we allow ourselves as a nation to understand and accept the source of the problem we can move quickly to its solution.
We have a foreign corporation in control of more of our American oil than any United States corporation. This corporation has committed crimes against man and nature and is under the control of an evil, previously unseen hand who has already presided over the failure of one of his countries most important financial institutions. BP can not be reformed and we must not allow the situation to continue.
We must insist that congress and the President come together for our national interest and force BP to divest its US assets and leave our hemisphere. No lessor solution can be acceptable. Force BP to use funds from those asset sales to make things right for America, for the Gulf, and for the many thousands of individuals whose lives and/or livelihoods have been lost or damaged.
The Boycott BP Movement and the Boston Tea Party
(Note: Read the original article with pics at http://hubpages.com/hub/BPmustBePunished)
Many have pointed out correctly over these months of conflict that the Boycott BP movement has almost no financial impact of the British oil giant or the British government. The company does not own the BP station on the corner, and the Exxon station on the next corner is just as likely to be selling BP product. Gasoline is gasoline. It is made by refining crude oil. BP is the largest producer and seller of crude oil in the United States and has remained so in spite of reduced sales at BP branded retail outlets.
Few have pointed out that the 342 chests of tea dumped into Boston Harbor had little financial impact Britain’s East India Company or the British government. Why should Americans have been forced to purchase tea from a British company? Tea from American merchants may not have been any cheaper, but our forefathers did not throw the tea into the harbor to get cheaper tea. They did it to protest the callous acts of a British government that used the Americas as a source of revenue and did not treat us with the respect we felt we deserved.
No one has pointed out the connection between the actions of British Petroleum and the actions of a British parliament which ultimately lead to the single sentence that defines our country and requires that we banish British Petroleum from our hemisphere just as our forefathers did the British army.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
When BP callously put the pursuit of short term profit ahead of the safety of Americans it denied collective thousands of Americans their unalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." For the 37 killed in the refinery and oil platform explosions BP took their lives. For the thousands fired through corporate downsizings and deprived of their livelihoods by the oil spill BP took their liberty and their ability to pursue happiness.
President Lincoln argued effectively that the United States should be interpreted through that single sentence. BP has trampled all over it. Each day those Americans who were not directly affected are bombarded by paid BP commercial messages designed to lead them to believe the company is doing what it can to make things right for those who were and continue to be affected. Wise up America. BP efforts and it public relations campaign serve one purpose. BP wants forgiveness so it can continue to operate in our hemisphere where it earns tremendous profits. BP’s callous disregard for Americans remains and appointing an American as its new Chief Executive Officer will do nothing to change it.
You know what our forefathers would have done. You know how President Lincoln would have reacted to the actions of BP. Now is the time we must act.
Continue to Boycott BP outlets as a primary method of sending the message to Washington that we Americans will not tolerate a British company trampling on our Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps independence from foreign oil is still only a dream, but independence from this particular callous foreign oil company is easily obtainable.
Force BP to divest its American assets and leave our hemisphere . Force BP to use the funds it receives from the asset sales to make things right in the gulf. Do not allow BP to write off the cost of the cleanup against taxable income. Let the profits that will flow from American oil assets accrue to the benefit of American companies and American citizens.
Told ya so! Told ya so!
How much oil has BP reclaimed from the spill?
The unintelligent masses will believe anything if they hear it often enough. Truth and logic won’t overcome the millions BP is spending to repeat its lies. BP corporate greed has caused the worst environmental disaster in history and has financially devastated thousands of American families. Are we going to allow a slick public relations campaign to overcome that reality? Shouldn’t the truth be given equal time? I think those BP commercials should be followed immediately with a statement of the actual facts:
BP has released 200 million gallons of oil and 2 million gallons of chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico and has reclaimed X number of gallons. BP knows what X is and isn’t telling.
BP commercials talk about skimming millions of gallons of oil/water mix but they aren’t admitting how little oil is in that mix. BP knows the number. It has the oil.
Punish BP - Punish BP - Punish BP
Punish BP
Even those advocating punishment have not grasped the best method to accomplish it. I’ve seen others suggest voiding BPs government contracts, killing the company, boycotting BP out of business, throwing the executives in jail, and even executing Tony Hayward. We all agree BP must pay but we can’t come to a consensus on how to punish BP.
As a former Senior BP Financial Analyst, I know BP is corrupt and I have a well considered and workable punishment that will have the added benefit of helping to stimulate the US economy:
Force BP to divest its US assets and leave our hemisphere . That will deny BP the source of 40% of its profits. Let the profits on those assets accrue to the benefit of American companies. Make BP pay for the cleanup and restitution from the asset sales. With my plan both the profits on BPs American assets and the cost of the cleanup stay in the US. Because 40% of BP stock is held by Americans the net benefit will be 1.6 times the cost of the cleanup or about $45 billion using BPs own figures.
BP should not be permitted to earn money in America after what it has done to our treasured gulf coast. Does it sound like I want vengeance? It should.
Talk Radio - BP, Washington, and The Spill Bill
Listen to me live on the radio Wednesday at 11 am. You can get it over the internet at www.tantalk1340.com. I’ll be trashing BP and the US government. I’ll be hitting them with something they can’t handle – THE TRUTH! This has come down to a battle of influence. Is Washington going to side with the American public or is it going to side with one of its biggest campaign contributors and most powerful lobbies? Unless we keep the pressure on, you know the answer.
Normally I prefer leaving the free market to take care of everything. I have no doubt the free market will eventually work in this case and BP will ultimately lose the fight to remain viable in the US. The issue here for me is time. Do we sit back and watch the gulf coast soak up oil while we wait for the free market to work? This is one of those rare times where we, the American people, need our government to act.
We need courageous governmental action out of Washington. Get the US military down there to take over and defend the gulf coast from this invading oil spill. We know the spill was caused by BP putting profits ahead of safety. Why are we letting BP do the cleanup when we already know the BP corporate culture requires them to do it as cheaply as possible?
We heard Kenneth Feinburg come out last week and accuse BP of stalling on paying claims and funding the $20 billion fund. At the same time we hear BP commercials every few minutes telling us the exact opposite. This company is evil and we need to force them out.
We’re already seeing political ads where challengers are bragging that their campaigns have not taken money from BP and implying that the incumbent is in BP’s pocket. Congress is debating The Spill Bill right now and will likely put in a provision that double taxes American oil companies and favors BP and other foreign oil companies. Washington! Get on our side.
