FuglyStick

The Associated Press: Rand Paul: Obama's criticism of BP 'un-American'

So let me get this straight--
The Tea Party, the jokers who are constantly rambling on about "personal responsibility" and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps;" who oppose national healthcare because "I got mine; if you don't, tough titties;" who oppose the regulation of Wall Street because they see it as a threat to the free market, even though the reckless practices of Wall Street led us down the path to a recession; who see nothing wrong with racial profiling and violating civil rights to keep those "brown people" in check--THESE SAME MOTHERFUCKERS are perfectly okay with giving a multi-billion industry a get out of jail free card and chalking up a global ecological disaster as "oops, accidents happen"?!

Two things should be completely obvious to even the most obtuse observer. First, the Tea Party platform is nothing but blatant hypocrisy. Second, the Tea Party is a populist tool of big business, who care nothing about your rights as an individual and everything about big business' pursuit of the almighty fucking dollar. So go right ahead, Baggers, and march lock step in time with the corporate drummer boy; eventually, all lemmings end up falling off the cliff.

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The_Dunedan

You know, I think I'm going to start referring to leftists with whom I disagree as "goatfuckers."

You might have something resembling a point here -if-, and -only- if, Dr. Paul (or anyone else) was suggesting that BP be allowed to -not- pay for the cleanup and associated costs, which they have repeatedly said they would do. Until and unless they refuse to do so, or have the laws changed to -actually- let them off the hook, your point is moot. It's not a "get out of jail free" card if it doesn't get you out of jail, costs something, or both.

SecretMethod70

*facepalm*

God, Rand Paul is such a fucking joke.

The true free market approach in this circumstance is something I totally support: absolutely no caps whatsoever on what BP and other companies must pay to clean up their mess. This is one example where a true free market could potentially due its job: actually paying for damages would have a serious impact on the bottom line of BP and related companies. It'd go a long way toward ensuring other companies don't make these same "mistakes," because it would be understood that such a disaster would likely mean the end of the company. That is how the libertarian free market is supposed to work: you take risks, and you accept the costs if things don't go as planned. I have a very good friend who is a free marketer to the extreme - thinks everything, including air and water, should be privatized. BP should be very happy that his vision isn't reality, because it would be even easier to demand damages from them if that were the case. Even so, just because the environment is part of the public trust doesn't mean the government - acting on behalf of the public - should not be able to demand reimbursement for all damages. That's not even counting all the people who have lost their livelihood from the mistakes these companies have made.

Dunedan: The companies are saying they will pay for the cleanup while conveniently working to ensure those costs are not representative of reality. They know full well that there is a phony legislative cap on the costs they can be required to pay, and they're already working very hard to limit the damages they have to pay out to the many, many individual lawsuits that are being brought against them from families of the dead and people who have had their livelihood (such as fishing) destroyed by this disaster.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

FuglyStick

You do that, Bagger Vance; but it was your own clan that initially adopted the "Teabagger" moniker.

And you don't find anything at all unusual that the Prince of Populist Town is rushing to the defense of poor helpless BP to protect them from that mean old president?

Here's what I know, to be a FACT: if Obama did not weigh in on this issue and adopted a laissez faire stance, Baggers would be whining "where's the outrage that Bush was subjected to after Katrina?"

As I said, hypocrites.

And one more thing--I will bitch slap any fucking Bagger I meet up with in real life who feels justified in applying the "unAmerican" tag to anyone who doesn't agree with their fucking point of view.

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The_Jazz

Wait, it's un-American to point out that a company was ignoring it OWN safety protocols?

I deal in liability all day every day for a living. I'm pretty fucking good at understanding it. There's a huge difference between an "accident", like when a car strikes an animal or downed tree, or an "avoidable mishap", like when a trucker is speeding and plows into the back of stopped traffic.

I wrote an account a long, long time ago that had manufactured dry cleaning equipment for decades (like 70 years). They constantly paid claims because the old machinery didn't have basic safety guards. We tried and tried to get them to do something to address the owners of the old equipment, but they just didn't see it as a problem. That's probably why their premium increased 500% in 2 years.

BP, Transoceanic, Haliburton and the still-unnamed manufacturer of the blowout preventer are all on the hook for this. Actually, their insurance companies are. And you better expect that those folks are going to pay. This was no accident. They were speeding at night in the rain with a big load behind them. It wasn't pre-ordained that this would happen, but they didn't take the basic steps to make sure that it didn't. Therefore, they're fucked.

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"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Baraka_Guru

The declaration of un-Americanism is a symptom of a kind of Godwin's law in politics.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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FoolThemAll

I'm shocked that some members of a political movement made a poor rhetorical decision. That never happens.

Your choice to continue using that term doesn't magically become respectful or okay. And it pretty much kills the credibility of your OP.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

The_Dunedan

Actually no, goatfucker. The term was coined by Anderson Cooper of CNN after TEA Party members got into the brief habit of mailing tea bags (as in Boston Tea Party) to representatives as a pun voicing their frustrations with Mr. Bush's bailout. Mr. Cooper, at least, had the decency to retract his sexually offensive pun the next day on AC360.

I'll remember that the next time some goatfucker labels TEA Party members as Seditious or un-American. Physician, heal thyself.

This is my view as well, as well as being that of most right-libertarians I'm aware of....oddly enough, the Drs Paul included. They want BP to suffer (as suffer they should) but at the hands of the market and the courts, not the State.

The_Jazz

---

-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- Keep it above the belt, fellows. That means that using the terms "teabagger", "goatfucker" or any diminutions of either will earn you a private chat with yours truely. And we all know how that is going to go. I'm withdrawing from this thread but will continue to monitor it closely. Please post with that in mind.

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"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

guy44

Rand Paul also thinks that liberals, Canadians, and Mexicans are conspiring to create a unified North American currency called the Amero, and that they are also trying to create something called the NAFTA Superhighway. Like his old man and his namesake, he's a total loon, I don't particularly feel the need to take anything he says seriously.

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dc_dux

According to the conservative National Review, it was the tea baggers themselves who coined the term:

Then, Anderson Cooper and others ran with it.

But whats in a name.

Rand Paul is now the new voice of the movement. Is that a step up from Sarah Palin?

Probably not....but the fact remains, extemists like these two will turn off the independent voters before you can say tea baggers are nuts.

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The_Dunedan

They may have coined the prototype of the term, but not for themselves and not used in its' current parlance. From your source:

dc_dux

Right.

It was ok for them to use the term to attack the White House, but then the tea baggers get all pissy when its thrown back at them.

And I guess its ok for the tea baggers to wave pictures with Obama/Hitler comparisons.

My only point is that the extremists within the movement, including de facto leaders like Paul and Palin, are what defines the movement....right or wrong. The movement has legitimate concerns, they just dont have a legitimate voice.

Oh, and Newt Gingrich with his latest Obama/Nazi rants

Update....Rand Paul just backed out of his Sunday interview on Meet the Press. Will we see future TV appearances limited to FOX News now?

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Rekna

Back to Rand Paul. Anyone notice that he wants to repeal many parts of the civil rights act? IE he doesn't think the civil rights act should apply to private entities....

The_Dunedan

The problem here is this. The TEA Party (everyone keeps telling me) is mostly made up of old white people who are completely out of touch with popular culture and norms. People like that aren't exactly going to be "hip" to the meaning of the term, especially since they were very obviously applying it to the act of mailing a tea-bag to a legislator. The folks who've since applied the term -to- them, such as Mr. Cooper, are -very- much aware of the word's meaning and have used it as such. One was a malapropism, the other is an insult, and a fairly obscene one at that.

Of course it is, just like it was ok for anti-Bush folks to wave the same signs with Bush's face.

Rekna

You are being disingenuous here. The sign said "Teabag the white house before they teabag you." So the person who wrote that sign was under the impression that the white house was going to mail bags of tea to people, and that offended him enough to make a sign? The person who made that sign clearly knew the definition, which is why they chose that verbiage. They were trying to be cleaver and offensive.

guy44

I think what you are forgetting here is just how insanely funny it is to have an opponent who kept shouting that they were teabaggers. It was hilarious. I miss that.

The funniest comment I've seen on the topic is that the these conservatives should come up with a new, anti-Democratic Party name: Donkey Punchers!

Ah, 2009. Those were good times.

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FuglyStick

I digress, in respect to the moderators of this board.

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Idyllic

the New American Tea Bag Party: Tax Protest for Busy People

I’m sure this guy really enjoyed being compared to “testicles dangled in ones mouth” when he was rightfully protesting taxes.

It was the TEA BAG PARTY Movement. The term “tea bagger” was offensive to begin with and was initially used as a double entendre by some of the immature conservatives as a crude attack on the white house which backfired. It was never the intent for the TEA BAG PARTY Movement participants to be called “tea baggers”, bunch of immature name callers thinking they were smart up in front of the white house being crude, bought their own party the label. But some liberals had no problem affixing the term to those who were merely making a statement about taxation policy based in the historical concepts of the “Boston Tea Party” it’s a real shame when even history is dirtied to appease one parties interest of degrading another.

A few self serving immature protesters carried signs that said tea bag the white house, as to say protest the white house, send tea bags as a sign of your protest and/or I guess we will dangle our balls over the mouth of the government until they take notice of spending. They weren’t calling the persons inside the white house nut sacks, which was apparently being saved for the conservative to do, what a nice way to view fellow Americans merely because of their political allegiance, it really only makes individuals, regardless of their party, look just as classless as any other “far” winged persons who perpetuate derogatory labeling of Americans, or any persons, based on their party line involvement.

Moderate conservatives don’t have a respected voice anymore because everything “hard core righties” have to say is pounced upon, taken and twisted into an opportunity to degrade them personally, they all do it to each other. Liberals blame conservatives blame liberals, call names, intimidate, degrade……. like a bunch of elementary kids on a playground whose parents, being the American public, then defend their “kids” by saying well such and such started it, so it’s o.k.

It’s not o.k., for as much as conservatives try to be responsible, and American in their own right, in their own way, many liberals will happily take every opportunity to destroy the party based on the immature remarks of a few, it’s not like the liberal party is without fault. It has almost become un-American to be conservative in our nation, at least that is the way liberals make you feel if you appear to have even remotely traditional values, you are antiquated and homophobic, the problem is, that just isn’t true.

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Seaver

Great Post Idyllic

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The_Jazz

---

-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- Final warning. If any of my friends on the left want to continue to use the term "tea bagger" or any diminutions, they'll be dealing with me via official channels. My friends on the right have somehow managed to have a modicum of decorum. I expect my leftist friends to do the same. If that is not 100% perfectly crystal clear, please PM me for more clarification. And for the record, I'm in a good mood, otherwise I'd have hit 2 of you already since you must think that you're somehow special and above the rules. You're not.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

filtherton

Aren't the courts and the state the same entity? Who would enforce court decrees punishing BP? How would the market make BP suffer?

There are some things about libertarianism that don't add up to me.

Seaver

With the current status of futures trading, it would never be punished. Other oil companies would buy BP Oil and repackage it as their own. BP would lose maybe $.00001/gal, but it's far from punishing.

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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

The_Dunedan

Arbitration of civil disputes is one of the very few functions most libertarians, left or right, assign as legitimate duties of the State itself. However, there is no certain need even for this. Anarcho-libertarian theorists have argued for the feasibility of private arbitration, the outcomes enforced by social pressure and shunning for those found liable for damages.

The crucial difference is that beyond certain easily-controlled and enumerated court costs, the Government has no financial stake in a dispute, and has a markedly lessened ability to utilise the coercive power of the State in order to further the ideology in power at the time. With the State itself, with all its' corrupt, inefficient, wasteful, sluggish larcenous tendancies in charge of the fines, the amounts demanded, and most importantly the -recipient- of the fines, the power and temptation for abuse are tremendous.

SecretMethod70

I don't think anyone disagrees that the courts are the place where disputes between BP and, say, fisherman should take place. I still don't see why the Obama administration can't make its opinion known on the matter. Furthermore, since the environment is part of the public trust, the government is the damaged entity in that matter. To top it off, if the government sees that current laws don't adequately deal with the situation, I see nothing wrong with them working to fix that.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

filtherton

So we'd be left to just hope that BP changes it's ways because otherwise people will be mean to them? What happens when large organizations that control resources vital to the operation of the economy figure out that they are impervious to social pressure and shunning?

Judges are just people who think silly outfits are a crucial part of sharing their opinions. Their opinions don't mean shit if no one is going to make sure their opinions are followed. This is where the coercive power of the state comes in. Even if the state just concerns itself with upholding court rulings, courts are filled with judges who are either elected by the people or appointed by the politicians. Wouldn't these judges, in a sense, be dictated by the ideologies in power? Isn't coercive state power, the kind that is at least partly defined by the ideology du jour, unavoidable?

ASU2003

1. The Republicans didn't want to regulate the mortgage guys or the derivatives. And most of the mid-2000s home flippers would probably be in the GOP.
2. Are they talking about taking away SS from the wealthy? Raising the retirement age to 70? Reducing the military? Or just social programs that they don't agree with?
3. How much have taxes gone up? And not the health insurance taxes vs insurance premium issue...
4. It's not right, but there wasn't very much support for raising taxes to pay for programs in the 80s or the last 10 years when the deficit actually was going up.
5. Without the banks, we would have had big problems. It would take years to recover from a major bank collapse. The same people in the financial industry would still be in it in the future.
6. So, now that the average middle age person has been able to write off their mortgage interest, they don't want to let others have that benefit? I think the charity thing should be limited to charities that they are not a part of.
7. Even if they could read them, do you think that they would change their mind?
8. We only breathe a small amount of CO2 compared to the amount industry releases... And the real cost of carbon based energy isn't being paid right now. Maybe if we had to pay to clean up oil spills, military operations to secure oil and stop the switch to the euro, and just cleaning up the air.
9. The amount of wealth being transfered is pretty much the opposite of what they are claiming.
10. I think the stock market has recovered. People who rode out the dip are doing ok. The 'government' shouldn't interfere in one breathe, yet they want them to protect their investments.

And criticizing companies and banks that do stupid things is perfectly fine. It's un-American if we were prevented from criticizing.

Strange Famous

Being the lackey of Big Oil probably isnt a very popular calling right now. I'd keep my head down if I was Rand Raul.

I dont really understand how "the tea party" is a rallying call of any American political movement. Is there really a part of the American government who wants to celebrate and glorify tax evasion??

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for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Seaver

Completely false. Fannie May/Freddie Mac were Democrat initiatives. Bill Clinton helped forge the idea that everyone should own a home, even those who can't necessarily afford it.

They claim they haven't been properly represented in Washington for a decade or so, that the people they put in power ignored what they wanted and did something completely different. So in essence it's not tax evasion, it's taxation without representation.

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Strange Famous

But the "Boston Tea Party" was in fact - as well as an act of criminal theft and vandalism - a tax protest and an act of tax evasion. I think its interesting that mainstream Republicans would use this action as a symbol for their movement. I wonder if theyll be so keen on freeing people from the burden of taxation when they get back in power!

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

The_Dunedan

Which explains why you are a Subject and we are Citizens.

Yes, a large part. And considering what those taxes they wish to evade frequently end up paying for, I'd think you would too. Less money in taxes means less money to bomb brown people, after all.

The Republicans associating themselves with the TEA Party are hardly "Mainstream" within the republican party. The Drs. Paul, for instance, are staunchly anti-war, anti-Gitmo, and anti-bailout: all three of which began as "mainstream" Republican programmes and all three of which they've opposed from the start.


Nobody is impervious to shunning; in commercial terms it's called a boycott. Ask Fuji, Smith & Wesson, Exxon, and the Montgomery Transport Authority how those work. There are no more monopolies anymore (aside from the State monopoly on Force), so no one company is -that- important to any one market, and with todays rapid flow of information none ever will be again, not until Shipstones are invented and probably not even then.

You miss the point. Civil disputes are best handled by the Courts because in such a case the Government has no stake, they stand to gain nothing. When the Gov't itself is the recipient of the penalty (fine, as opposed to judgment), there is a distinct incentive for accusation to become guilt, for hearsay to become evidence, and for justice to become "just us." My primary concern is removing the incentive for the State to enrich and aggrandize itself in the name of "justice."

Strange Famous

oh well, if he is "anti-bailout" (ie - he advocated allowing the world banking system to fail) then he has to be pretty much on the margins of the political world.

I know there are some people who have the view "we are angry with the banks and we want to punish them for forcing us to bail them out", but not many people in the mainstream or even close to it would advocate not saving the banks.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

ASU2003

I think the main problem was that a small group of people bought 5 or 6 homes they had no intention of ever living in. They just wanted to ride the wave up, but were able to walk away if things went south. It was these people who were qualified financially to buy these homes with zero down, yet they were never planning on making the payments. That is why Miami, Phoenix, & Vegas were hit hard.

Fannie & Freddie I am guessing were ways to prevent banks from charging 14% interest because there was no incentive for private banks to really 'compete' against each other.

FuglyStick

Exactly. They thought they were real estate moguls, bought houses they never intended to make payments on because they were going to turn them over quickly, but caused real estate prices to shoot through the roof so they couldn't unload them, and then defaulted on the loans when the interest rates went up.

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dippin

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the main culprits for this mess, the second they were bailed out this mess would have gone away.

In fact, it has been more than established by now that whatever role those companies, the CRA, or low income home buyers played in the crisis, it was very far from being the main or one of the main causes for this mess.

There is a reason why the heaviest hit areas in terms of foreclosures are Vegas, South Florida, and southern California, and not Queens, Oakland and so on.

Tully Mars

That's pretty much exactly how the majority of liberals felt during the eight years of the Bush Jr. Admin. Anything you said that didn't line up with Bush Admin. made you a terrorist loving, America hating liberal bastard. Funny thing is a lot of those liberal bastards were complaining about, among other things, the cost of the war(s) and the fact Bush simply removed their costs from the budget. Bush never vetoed one budget item that I know. His Admin. spent money like drunken sailor in a whore house. Now the tea party is all about limiting government spending... where were these good conservatives for the Bush years?

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filtherton

So how would one go about boycotting BP? When you're filling your car, how can you tell whether the gas you're pumping was drilled by BP? I know BP has a chain of gas stations, but I'm also pretty sure that they sell gas to independent gas stations too. How do you tell which of the plastic products you use were created using BP oil? What would stop BP from simply selling their oil to folks in less boycott-prone markets? I don't think an actual boycott of BP would ever work.

In a more general situation, what happens when companies commit unethical activities which aren't of sufficient scale to inspire enough public ire to bring about a boycott?

Both the state and the market tend toward inefficiency and graft. What I don't understand is why a person would ideologically commit to one over the other. I think that it makes more sense to evaluate the usefulness of each with respect to a given situation.

A sidenote on civil disputes: In Minneapolis, there is a rich tradition among some landlords to keep the damage deposits of outgoing tenants regardless of the condition of the apartment. They do this because it forces the tenant to sue to get the deposit back, a task which deters many of the economically distressed folks who these landlords typically rent to. The tenants who do sue frequently win, and often get punitive damages awarded on top of the original deposit amount. It doesn't matter though, because the city has no mechanism in place to make the landlords actually pay. Oddly enough, the landlords don't seem too inclined to police themselves either. So they don't pay their former tenants a dime, even when court ordered to do so. This is an example of the potential worthlessness of courts to bring about change in the behavior of misbehaving businesspeople.

roachboy

as an aside, the minneapolis tradition amongst landlords of treating security deposits as tips is like bp's cavalier attitude toward environmental regulation in general. they preferred to blow off as much routine proactive work as possible and address problems when they emerged by paying the fines. that's how bp amassed the appalling record that it has. finally, the epa is considering barring bp from govt contracts, which could include leases on the drilling platforms bp already has going in the gulf of mexico, where they're the largest driller. i posted information about this to the other gulf thread.

in the material world it is obvious that capitalist firms require regulation at the very least as a feedback loop with reference to which they can gauge something of their actions relative to "raw materials" (in quotes because if you're extracting oil it's obvious that you are putting an entire environment at risk which involves a wide range of stakeholders who are not represented, who have no say, over the disposition of that resource thanks to the stupidity which follows from private property)....and because bidness interests are simply too narrow a basis for managing interactions with contexts/environments. bidness interests are not responsible enough to be left to their own devices.

i think regulatory frames are required so long as capitalist rationality shapes how firms operate. the only way in which anything like a libertarian viewpoint makes sense to me is in a post-revolutionary context, which one could speculate about but which isn't really tied to a political movement at this point.

as for the op...i am pleased that the teapartiers are talking more than they're being talked about these days. they are their own worst enemy. i quite like that it's obvious to more people that even if there are some who are sympathetic with the tea bags who are articulate and relatively sane, there are also ALOT of people within that poujadiste hodgepodge who are nuts. rand paul is nuts. if he wasn't, he would be aware of how his rhetoric looks taken out of context. at the level of content, he's a joke in my view, but as a public figure incapable of figuring out how his language can work against him, he's nutty.

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ASU2003

I'm trying to figure out how the Ron Paul movement got taken over by the Rush, Hannity, Beck & Palin groups. Auditing the Fed, individual rights (that don't hurt others), more peaceful foreign policy, and balancing the budget while fixing problems are things that would have been positive to try and work on. But they seem to have turned into a group that doesn't want the Democrats to do anything.

Ron Paul made some sense and I think the country would have been good if he was President. I wouldn't even want to think what the result of a large number of Tea Party members winning would be though.

Derwood

Ron Paul would be a terrible president (especially if you support him, because none of his initiatives would ever make it out of congress)

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