Brad,

It came across not as a "defense" of BP, but more of bashing our heads in the fact that private corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders. And that's a point that really needs making. Your intro to it was irrelevant to the main point, so did raise any hackles!

PS: I really LOVE the captch you use. It still needs to be read by a human, but the letters are always well separated, and limiting them to the hex digits makes them incredibly easy to tell apart - no 'is that a "5" or on "S"?' type confusion!

Rats! Last sentence of first paragraph SHOULD have been: ... so didn't raise any hackles!

Brad, thanks for getting the reality of "sociopathic corporate acts" right out front.
The Bush/Cheney Wrecking Crew and the Corporate Govenment that created the capture of the MMS defines exactly how we, as a nation, are in the dire straights that we are now. Just as the Oil Companies "captured" MMS the FED and Bernanke's admissions of malfeasance in Banking Regulation led to the Capture of Congress and the Senate demonstrated in the Dodd Corporate Fascist Cooperation and Collusion Act of 2010.

The fundamental problem of Corporate Personhood now enshrined by the Robert's Supreme Court is this foundation of the Capture of Government by the Corporate Fascists. A solution is the lifting of the Corporate Veil to guarantee the Liability of Boards of Directors, Executives and Shareholders of the Corporate Collective Entity and destruction of the Corporate Sociopathic Collective Paper Person. This removes the rights to free speech from a Paper entity and places the biological human back in the line of fire for responsible actions..

OT:

Brad, you've got to read this article if you haven't already (it talks about ACORN and some of your favorite characters).

From Rogues of K Street--Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant:

The campaign plan...uses the phrase black arts when talking about how we’ll win in the fall. It’s not a document filled with dirty tricks but a plan to create a nonprofit organization called Ensuring Liberty Corporation. It uses unconventional methods to get our message out...A good piece of mail gets its message across in 10 seconds. Television gives you 30 seconds, maybe. We’re playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives. In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that causes road rage...

http://www.playboy.com/a...street/index.html?page=1

Yeah sure, no dirty tricks there, more like a psy-ops program designed to brainwash white working-class conservatives. This confirms what I believe: the rightwing knows how to stimulate the brains of its followers to trigger the release of norepinephrine (a stress hormone) when exposed to falsely associated frames within carefully constructed narrative structures. It is the method to Glenn Beck’s madness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtlOBa6qa3o

This psychological conditioning creates unconscious and automatic negative reactions in conservative brains toward people like Obama, thus explaining why they are impervious to facts and the truth. They unilaterally surrender their capacity for reason without ever being aware of what’s been done to them.

- Tom

Ah, the old descriptive/normative matter. It might be descriptively true to say that "the only responsibility corporations have is to their shareholders", but that's very different than the issue of what responsibility corporations ought to have, particularly those utilizing natural resources to an extent where there exists a potential for massive impact.

Don't most progressives express normative objections to the very free-market model of corporations only answering to bottom-lines, profits, and shareholders that you seem to adopt as a premise?

Audrey II asked @ 5:

Don't most progressives express normative objections to the very free-market model of corporations only answering to bottom-lines, profits, and shareholders that you seem to adopt as a premise?

I can't speak for "most progressives", of course. I can barely speak for me. That said, a corporation has a legal, fiduciary duty to serve its shareholders. Period. End of story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do they have a moral responsibility to be swell? Especially when sucking of OUR resources to meet THEIR bottom line? Certainly. But morals have nothing to do with it. They are sociopathic legal fictions and, in the bargain, cannot be expected to have "morals".

That's why we have regulators to make certain their service to their shareholders doesn't overwhelm society. When the regulators give up that mission, and start working *for* the corporations instead, as we've had occur here, it becomes Koyaanisqatsi.

Brad - your stealing my stuff i've been saying the same thing about corps, they are not designed to care

form an earlier post I did at huffpost (written well before BP small people comment):

“I love anarchy and hate the police. I'm a business. For God's sake, I am a god. I should be above the law and never beholden to any rules, ethics, or responsibilities. I should be allowed to lie, cheat and steal with impunity. Those rule things, they're for for little people, who should not ever be allowed to harm me, or I will call the cops on them.

Why should I get this special treatment? Well first the SCOTUS says I am a person due all rights of person, but also not a person, so you can't throw me in jail.

And if you allow me, a business, to do whatever is in my self-interest without any limits, this selfish behavior will some how magically and automatically rain wealth, prosperity, and joy on the whole earth, I promise, really, even though I don't give a s$%^ about any thing but maximizing my profits.

If you put the slightest limitation on my ability to run myself into the ground by seeking short term profits, I will scream like the wicked witch under water and plead "I'm melting". I'm so fragile, you should be nice to me, but if you are not, I will turn on you like the sociopath I am.”

Actually, by acting in an irresponsible manner, BP has breached their fiduciary duty to their shareholders. All that lost revenue, gushing out into the ocean is no longer available to create even greater wealth for their shareholders. The relatively small amount of money they could of spent, but didn't, to make their operations safer resulted in (potentially) billions of dollars lost excluding cleanup/compensation costs.

@Karen
You really nailed there.I was just reading something along those same lines, if you care to check it out here is the link.

http://powerofnarrative....yourselves-will-pay.html

at willm....like the link, like this quote

"Think about this very carefully for a moment. The oppressor may inflict unimaginable cruelties on innocent victims --- but the victims may only protest in ways which the oppressor deems "acceptable." The profound injustice is obvious, but not in itself remarkable or unexpected: this is how oppression operates. But ask yourself about the deeper reason for the prohibition. This is of the greatest importance: the victims may only protest within a constricted range of "permissible" behavior because, when they exceed the prescribed limits, they make the oppressors too uncomfortable. They force the oppressors to confront the nature of what they, the oppressors, have done in ways that the oppressors do not choose to face."

This is so true, oppressor is hype senstive to "over" reactions which, in fact, are quite miled responses given the abuse and quite mild when compared to the abuse perpetrated by the oppressor...it is a profoundly frustrating situation that, short of an effective revolution leaves the oppressed either swallowing the oppressors demands to survive and have frustration work its way out in all sorts of dysfunctional ways.

An abused woman criticized by her husband for "attacking" him for some stray words, to an oppressed occupied country that is label as criminals or terrorist for engaging in weak, sporadic violence after being pummelled with strong, persistance war, all know this same process.

Brad, your bottom line of the bottom line is so true. There can be no argument. However, my guess as to why nobody sent you hate mail because of it? They're proud of it.