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The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

By on 8 Dec 2014commentsShare

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied BP’s request to take another look at the settlement it reached in 2012 to pay thousands of people and businesses harmed by its 4.9-million-barrel oil dump into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

BP wanted to argue to the highest court in the land that some of the claimants seeking damages from the company in relation to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill can’t convincingly link their losses to the mega-disaster. So in August, the oil giant filed a petition attacking its own multibillion-dollar settlement (which included pleading guilty to manslaughtering 11 workers and bullshitting Congress about how much oil was spilling).

But SCOTUS won’t even give BP a chance to make its case. In fact, the justices didn’t even remark on their refusal to hear the appeal.

In the wake of the spill, BP has spent more than $13 billion settling claims by individuals, businesses, and government entities, and another $14 billion-plus for response and cleanup. The settlement that BP’s trying to get out of doesn’t have a cap for how much the company might have to pay out, but BP estimates that it will spend about $9 billion to resolve claims. So far, it’s ponied up about $4 billion, according to Fuel Fix.

Today, legal blogger Tom Young wrote a post encouraging all types of eligible Gulf Coast-state enterprises — those not in the casino, insurance, banking, or real estate industries — to get evaluated by an attorney who’s navigated the BP claims process:

One would be hard pressed to identify too many Gulf area businesses that did not endure some loss, small or large, that related in some way to the disaster. …

That said, less than 30% of all eligible businesses have filed claims. Of those who have filed, the average payment exceeds $100,000.

Even churches and nonprofits might be able to claim some compensation. The deadline for filing is expected to be set for June 2015.

Don’t think the payouts represent the end of this endless saga, though. Dishing out a bunch of money to people affected by the spill is nice, but wrongs won’t be righted that easy.

These days in the Gulf, BP is alleging that the spill is all cleaned up, but the Coast Guard begs to differ — and geochemists have found that some 2 million barrels of crude are still trapped in the deep. Meanwhile, Alabama is putting $60 million in restoration funding toward rebuilding a beachfront hotel destroyed by Hurricane Ivan. I guess otters, tuna, and dolphins will have to file their own claims to some of that settlement cash.

Source:
The Supreme Court refuses to let BP pay less for its oil spill

, ClimateProgress.

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The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

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Opposition to Obamacare Appears To Be Shrinking as Problems Get Resolved

Mother Jones

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The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll is out, and Greg Sargent summarizes the highlights: “Views of the ACA remain unfavorable, but the gap is narrowing…..Support for repeal continues to shrink….Crucially, a majority, 53 percent, say they are tired about hearing about the law and want to move on to other issues….Most of the ACA’s individual provisions are wildly popular.”

There’s one other interesting note from the latest poll, along with one frustrating note. First the interesting note. On Monday I mentioned that views of Obamacare had become dramatically less favorable among the uninsured. Apparently that was short-lived. Here’s the latest:

This suggests that the main reason for the blip was Obamacare’s well-publicized rollout problems. Once those got addressed, and people were able to sign up without too much hassle, opinions turned back around.

And now for the frustrating note. I’ve mentioned several times before that a simple approval/disapproval question about Obamacare is misleading. The problem is that there’s a fair chunk of the population that disapproves of Obamacare not because it’s a government takeover of health care, but because it doesn’t go far enough. These are people who are perfectly happy with the idea of national healthcare, but want Obamacare to do more. This is obviously not part of the standard conservative critique that we automatically think of whenever we hear about “disapproval” of Obamacare.

This month, Kaiser asked about this in more detail than before. Among those who disapprove, they asked why they disapproved. Here’s what they got:

So close! The bottom two answers are clearly right-wing concerns. But the first one is mixed. “Cost concerns” is split between people who think the subsidies are too low (left-wing criticism) and those who think it’s a budget buster (right-wing criticism). Those are very different things. This was a great opportunity to really get a read on how much right-wing opposition there really is to Obamacare, but it doesn’t quite do it. Maybe next time.

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Opposition to Obamacare Appears To Be Shrinking as Problems Get Resolved

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Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone? (Updated)

Mother Jones

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This post has been updated.

Student protesters have filled the streets of many Venezuelan cities for the last two weeks to express their dissatisfaction with the socialist government, the deteriorating economy, and the violence that plagues the country. In the past few days the situation has worsened, as crackdowns from the National Guard and attacks from paramilitary groups have left at least six people dead so far.

Who are the protesters? Venezuela’s opposition party is unified by the desire to end the reign of “chavismo,” the socialist system devised by Hugo Chávez, and continued, albeit less handily, by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. The emergent leader of the protests is Leopoldo López, a Harvard-educated descendent of Simón Bolívar, and the former mayor of a Caracas municipality. He turned himself over to government forces after Maduro publicly demanded his arrest; López has called for more protests from prison. Also prominent in the opposition is María Corina Machado, a congresswoman in the National Assembly.

The protests started in the western border city of San Cristóbal, where students took to the streets on February 2 to express discontent with rampant crime. The forceful reaction of the authorities prompted other students in other cities to protest in solidarity. The protesters are largely from the middle class.

Maduro’s leadership has proved ineffective, and the economic policies he inherited from Chávez, including the nationalization of many industries, have wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan economy; these days, people are struggling to find the bare necessities. The scarcity index has reached an astonishing 28 percent, meaning that toilet paper, flour, and other basics simply might not be in stock. Maduro has threatened to raise gas prices, which were kept artificially low for 15 years because increasing them is politically disastrous. Inflation has more than doubled in the past year. Finally, the insanely high homicide rate, 39 deaths per 100,000 people in 2013, has many Venezuelans fed up with the status quo.

How is the government responding? Maduro, who narrowly beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in the election after Chávez’s March 2013 death, has swiftly cracked down on broadcast media coverage of the protests. The Colombian channel NTN24, which was covering the violence in the streets, has been taken off the air. Maduro expelled the CNN team today by revoking their press credentials.

Reports of paramilitary groups (known as colectivos), riding around on motorcycles and terrorizing protesters and civilians “tend to be exaggerated,” said David Smilde, a University of Georgia sociologist and senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America who returned from Venezuela yesterday. Though it is surely happening (with low quality video evidence to back it up), “that phenomenon appeals to the middle class’s worst nightmare of having these armed poor people on motorcycles.”

“The bigger problem,” Smilde continued, “is actually the government troops. The National Guard is the one that is doing the most violence, shooting on protesters and buildings. They tend to be very unprofessional. They don’t think in terms of civilian policing, so they will often fire on people who are fleeing. These are people who are 20 to 22 years old and oftentimes they end up being violent. I don’t think it’s necessarily state policy to repress voters. But the state could definitely make it clearer that there should be no violence.”

In a dramatic video, armed men reportedly from SEBIN, the Venezuelan intelligence agency, stormed the opposition party HQ. Reports have also surfaced of detainees being beaten, and the Human Rights Watch has called for the international community to condemn the violence against protesters and journalists.

How serious is the crisis? While some residents of Venezuela’s biggest cities, like Caracas, San Cristóbal, Mérida, Valencia, and Maracaibo decry the “war zone” in the streets, for many in Venezuela, life continues as normal. “From the outside it always looks like the whole country’s in flames, but of course life goes on and most things are up and running,” Smilde said.

However, San Cristóbal appears to be headed toward more dramatic confrontation. The Andean college town of 650,000, situated near the border with Colombia, has been heavily barricaded by opposition protesters. The government has cut off internet service to the city. Government paratroopers are on the way. And the opposition isn’t backing down, said Juan Nagel, editor of the blog Caracas Chronicles.

What’s going to happen next? So far it seems like the protests have not achieved support from the poor, who long have identified as chavistas. As Capriles, still the opposition’s biggest name, told The Economist, “For the protests to be successful, they must include the poor.”

Capriles has urged protesters to gather tomorrow en masse, and march peacefully. From prison, López passed a note to his wife, calling for more protests, a message that rapidly spread through social networks. “Tomorrow will tell what the future’s going to be,” Smilde said. If the turnout is huge and violence breaks out, Venezuela may be headed for prolonged unrest. If not, he said, things may “fizzle out.”

UPDATE: Saturday, February 22, 6:30 p.m. ET (Benjy Hansen-Bundy): Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets today, some to protest Maduro’s government, others to support it. The AFP reported at least 50,000 opposition protesters marching in the streets of the Sucre neighborhood of Caracas. A pro-government rally, also in the capital, marched “against fascism.” Though today’s protests were largely peaceful, Al Jazeera has reported at least eight deaths and more than 100 injuries since the protests began on February 4.

Leopoldo López Miguel Gutierrez/EFE/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Boris Vergara/Xinhua/ZUMA

Nicolás Maduro Venezuela’s Presidency/Xinhua/ZUMA

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Has Venezuela Turned Into a War Zone? (Updated)

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California Is Giving Tesla Another Huge Tax Break. Good Move.

Mother Jones

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This story originally appear on Slate and is reproduced here as part of the ClimateDesk collaboration.

This is going to drive the Tesla-haters crazy. The luxury electric-car maker is getting a huge new tax break from California, SFGate reports. The state will let it off the hook for sales and use taxes on some $415 million in new equipment it’s purchasing in order to expand production of the Model S at its Bay Area factory. That amounts to a $34.7 million tax break to produce more of a vehicle whose sticker price starts above $70,000.

Tax breaks for the rich! Corporate giveaways! The working people forced to pay for tech titans’ fancy rides!

Well, sort of. But as SFGate‘s David R. Baker explains:

California is one of the few states to tax the purchase of manufacturing equipment, a policy that California business associations have spent years trying to change. But the state does grant exemptions for clean-tech companies as a way to encourage the industry’s growth. The exemptions are issued by the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, chaired by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

So, in fact, it isn’t Tesla per se that’s getting special treatment from the state. It’s the clean-tech industry in general, which California is very keen to promote for two reasons. One, it wants to establish itself as a leader in a sector that it believes will be a big driver of its economy in the decades to come. And two, it’s one of the few states in the country that’s actually, genuinely serious about reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions. Promoting clean energy is a crucial part of its strategy.

More broadly, whatever sense a tax on the purchase of manufacturing equipment might once have made for California, it’s patently counterproductive in the context of clean-tech startups in the 21st century. Add to that some of the highest income and sales taxes in the nation, and it’s no wonder California is worried about companies like Tesla picking up stakes and heading elsewhere. Businessweek notes that new manufacturing jobs in the state have risen less than 1 percent since 2010, compared with nearly 5 percent nationally. Gov. Jerry Brown has been chipping away at the tax already, and Tesla is just the latest example.

Nor is the deal likely to burden the state’s taxpayers. Tesla’s Model S is in huge demand, and the company has been scrambling since its launch to ramp up production. SFGate reports the new equipment will help Tesla boost production by some 35,000 vehicles a year from its current annual rate of 21,000. State analysts predict the added jobs and vehicle sales are expected to bring in more money to the state than the tax break will take away.

For all that, I think some criticism might still be justified if Tesla in the end simply remains a producer of luxury cars for the wealthiest consumers. But the company has insisted from the outset that its ultimate goal is to produce an all-electric car that middle-class buyers can afford. A Tesla spokeswoman told me last week the company is still on track to release its third-generation vehicle by 2016 or 2017. The price is widely expected to be about half that of the Model S—not cheap, but certainly headed in the right direction.

Meanwhile, the success of the Model S has kickstarted the industry as a whole and made California the epicenter of the electric-car world. That’s thanks in part to a similar tax break the state gave the company several years ago to manufacture its cars there in the first place. I’d say there are worse ways for a state to spend a few tens of millions. But if you’re still convinced that tax breaks to big manufacturers are unfair and wrong, you might want to train your ire on a state a little further north, which just offered an all-time record $8.7 billion in tax breaks to a company that manufactures perhaps the least-green transportation technology of all. The worst part: Boeing might just move out anyway.

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California Is Giving Tesla Another Huge Tax Break. Good Move.

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