{"id":1986,"date":"2010-06-20T19:59:12","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T19:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1986"},"modified":"2010-06-20T19:59:12","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T19:59:12","slug":"a_short_commentary_on_the_bp_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1986","title":{"rendered":"A Short Commentary On The BP Shakedown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday <a href=\"http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2010\/06\/19\/of-course-its-a-shakedown\/\">Hot Air<\/a>&nbsp;posted an article that had originally been posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com\/2010\/06\/19\/of-course-its-a-shakedown\/#comments\">The Optimistic Conservative&#8217;s Blog<\/a>&nbsp;by J. E. Dyer.&nbsp; The article deals with the $20 billion escrow fund that BP has set up to compensate those people adversely impacted by the Gulf oil spill.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Dyer points out that the escrow fund is an exercise in executive power outside the rule of law.&nbsp; An appointee of President Obama will be in charge of dispensing these funds.&nbsp; The article points out that the six-month shutdown of drilling in the Gulf is not the result of BP&#8217;s actions, but of President Obama&#8217;s actions.&nbsp; He points out that a judge in a federal court might not hold BP totally responsible for the loss of employment caused by that shutdown&#8211;the shutdown was ordered by President Obama&#8211;it was not endorsed or ordered by the experts he consulted.&nbsp; In fact, the President has had to apologize to the experts he claimed supported the shutdown&#8211;the experts&nbsp;have publicly stated that they did not support the shutdown.&nbsp;&nbsp;When the President appoints someone to administer the relief fund, he will not have to bother with the risk of judges and courts that decide issues the wrong way.<\/p>\n<p>The article points out that up until now, there was a $75 million or so cap on damages a corporation would be required to pay after a drilling accident such as the Gulf oil spill.&nbsp; That amount was established by Congress (after much lobbying by and partying with oil company lobbyists).&nbsp; Keeping that amount low lowered insurance payments for the oil companys and kept their business&nbsp;in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The article concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p><em>&#8220;Darn good thing Congress spared us all that, huh?&nbsp; With BP&#8217;s liability capped by federal law, we&#8217;re left with Obama and his $20 billion slush fund to address the job and property losses.&nbsp; And hey, the good news is, with BP&#8217;s shareholders and investors &#8211; many of them Americans &#8211; to shake down, Obama doesn&#8217;t have to let this crisis go to waste!&nbsp; He can shut down businesses and jobs for his own political reasons, having nothing to do with the oil rig explosion, and make BP pay off the people he&#8217;s hurting!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;On such a thread hang our civil rights in Obama&#8217;s America.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The $20 billion fund was extortion.&nbsp; I am hoping that more people will be willing to admit that as we move forward.<em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday Hot Air&nbsp;posted an article that had originally been posted at The Optimistic Conservative&#8217;s Blog&nbsp;by J. E. Dyer.&nbsp; The article deals with the $20 billion escrow fund that BP has set up to compensate those people adversely impacted by the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1986\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}