A RICO lawsuit brought against BP by Pensacola’s own Levin-Papantonio law firm was thrown out by a federal judge on Friday.
No proof . . .
Barbier dismissed the claims, saying there is no proof the plaintiffs were directly harmed by the alleged racketeering.
Levin-Papantonio and a Greenwood, Miss. law firm alleged that BP defrauded regulators in connection with the safety of its drilling operations, its ability to respond to any oil spill, and its response to the actual spill, to the level of racketeering.
Plaintiffs Attorney Mike Papantonio made this statement a year ago.
“If you consider why we are where we are with this catastrophe, it’s because we allowed the oil industry to dictate what we were supposed to do rather than us dictating what they are supposed to do. An agency charged with safeguarding all of us became captive and simply an extension of the petroleum industry.”
Last Friday, US District Judge Carl Barbier said . . .
there was no proof that the plaintiffs, which include businesses and homeowners, were directly harmed in a way to sustain their claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, or RICO. That law originally was intended to fight organised crime.
So a year later it turns out that following current law takes precedence over woulda coulda shoulda “law.”
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier gave BP another win by setting aside claims filed by one of BP’s partners in the well project that resulted in the disaster.
BP won another battle last month when the court said that the Sierra Club can not join the suit as a plaintiff. Because “the Sierra Club failed to show that its interests in the suit were strong enough to grant its motion to join the matter as a plaintiff.” No standing.
I guess we won’t be seeing Dick Cheney being frog marched for anything to do with the Deepwater Horizon accident.
This week’s weekly address was about the high gas prices and energy in general. President Obama says . . .
The truth is there is no silver bullet that can bring down gasoline prices right away.
And in his mind, a perfectly acceptable excuse for doing absolutely nothing to exploit our own fossil fuel resources or building more refineries or nuclear power plants like he said he was going to do last year.
And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. (Applause.) It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. (Applause.) It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.
[I]n order to sustain economic growth, produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we’re going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.
After four decades of doing nothing, we have forfeited the option of being an oil producer-seller and ensured our dependence on foreign countries as an oil purchaser. Something President Carter meant to fix when he created the Department of Energy. Look how well that turned out.
As usual, nothing that happens to us is Obama’s fault. The media will vouch for that. The answer from the empty suit is to investigate. Create a commission or ‘task force’ to investigate what someone else must be doing to us. He, and we, are always the victim. Taking responsibility is something that empty suits don’t do.
Let’s also consider the consequences that our huge debt and the Federal Reserve’s QE2 is having on the dollar. It is worth less, and heading south. That, all on its own, makes the cost of oil from overseas go up and is reflected at the pump.
The gougers and speculators bogeymen were investigated after Katrina. That proved nothing then and will be the same this time.
President Obama refuses to recognize that he has the power to lower gas and oil prices in four minutes if he were to say (and then actually do) that his new energy policy will include developing our own resources with the goal of making America the oil producer that it can be instead of being dependent on foreign sources for our energy survival.
In order to advance ‘alternative’ energy resources, it is his (and environmentalist’s) plan to choke this country and economy with his hands around the fossil and nuclear energy industries’ throat. That he can’t advance both simultaneously like he said last year shows him for the empty-suit ideologue that he is.
Cutting subsidies is good as long as he also cuts the strings that were attached to them. But moving them elsewhere is not. As always, the free-market will make the investment when both science and economics dictate. The trouble is, a free-market economy to Obama is like a crucifix to a vampire.
The more distress he can cause to the economy and capitalism, the easier it becomes for him to ‘remake America’ into something that Europeans are now trying to get away from.
Dateline San Francisco - In a move that could shake up the American solar industry, General Electric plans to announce on Thursday that it will build the nation’s largest photovoltaic panel factory, with the goal of becoming a major player in the market.
The plant, whose location has not been determined, will employ 400 workers and create 600 related jobs, according to G.E. The factory would annually produce solar panels that would generate 400 megawatts of energy, the company said, and would begin manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic panels made of a material called cadmium telluride in 2013
With one big G.E. investment in wind energy already in Pensacola, seems like a solar panel factory here too would be a good move. G.E. said it was not applying for a loan guarantee but was exploring applying for state and federal manufacturing tax credits.
Here’s a new project for City, County, and state officials. Go after that business and the jobs that go with it.
US Export-Import Bank extends $3 billion credit to Brazil to finance infrastructure projects and offshore oil drilling. So says the Export-Import Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg, who traveled to Brazil with President Obama.
It’s cool that they are taking an interest in offshore drilling and new offshore technology like floating storage facilities. It’s just too bad that it will be creating no jobs for U.S. workers and plenty of jobs for Brazil and other foreign countries. Isn’t it amazing how generous he is with your money for something he won’t do here?
Here’s an idea: Let American companies do what Obama is paying Brazilian companies to do — drill offshore. We won’t have to pay them money or float them any loans to do it, either. In fact, we will make money off of the leases, while the effort creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the US, creating more tax revenue rather than emptying out the Treasury.
Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama. Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.
On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.
‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.
First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .
Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.
[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.
Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.
and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.
Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?
Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.
Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.
There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?
In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.
Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.
“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”
So don’t worry. Be happy.
He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”
President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.
The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.
A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude. This is good news where crude oil is concerned. And even better news for natural gas.
This is a twofer. An opportunity to get to and use more of the energy resources we have while reducing the amount of money we are currently shipping overseas for same.
And as an added bonus, it will give the energy deniers a wedgie to fret over.
Why did tens of thousands of Egyptians take to the streets and demand regime change? High food and energy prices, high unemployment, economic stagnation, and a government un-responsive to the people. That’s why they, and President Obama, are demanding and asking for President Mubarak to resign. So when we see hundreds of thousands, cumulatively millions, of people take to the streets in America for much the same reason, and then some, shouldn’t we (the media included) be asking the same question?
While our nation languishes amidst record food and energy prices, unprecedented underemployment (including those excluded from the workforce) and economic stagnation, crippling regulations, and an administration in contempt of two court decisions, . . . . there is one salient question that we should excogitate from Obama’s handling of the Egyptian insurgency. If Obama is willing to listen to the protesters of a foreign country due to their grievances from high food and energy prices and an unresponsive government, shouldn’t he accede to the similar demands of his own citizens and resign immediately?
Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?
For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.
Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.
QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.
The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.
When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day, a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.
UPDATE 06:50:
As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:
For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.
ABC, part of the propaganda wing of the West Wing, is getting out in front of the questions like this one. Where in the world did this political upheaval in Egypt come from, and why was it kept from the American people?
If we are to believe presidential advisor David Axelrod, and who believes Axelrod anyway, this is something that the president has been working on for the last 2 years. Oh really? This seems to have worked out about as good as the ‘I will not rest’ line he’s used for the past two years to give the illusion that he is creating jobs.
Which begs the question that Jake Tapper certainly will not ask. If Egypt was at the brink of some sort of revolution, why didn’t you talk about it? Why didn’t the State Department talk about it? Why would you keep the American people in the dark about something this big?
Would it have anything to do with oil? Since you apparently are so on top of what is going on in the Middle East, what is the state of affairs of the rest of our ‘allies’ in the Muslim world? Would hiding the threat of a radical Islamic takeover under the prayer rug work to our advantage, or to the advantage of the Islamic extremists? And one more. Does keeping this under the prayer rug have anything to do with our dependency on oil and your unwillingness to get our own?
It wasn’t Naziophobia to be against Hitler. It isn’t Islamophobia to know what radical Islamists are up to either.
If not Jake Tapper, who will ask President Obama or Sec. of State Clinton these questions?
meteeffeniron: Good evening!
Happy New Year!
Health, luck and love!
Ross: If unions go away, no one suffers. If small businesses go away, everyone suffers.
Ann Coulter: The Nazi war machine couldn't break the British, but the modern welfare state has.
Newt Gingrich: “We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food stamp president in American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of [...]
Neal Boortz: In the beginning there was a void. The void moveth to Washington whereupon it surroundeth itself with a sphincter muscle.
