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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
If they require help from We the People to clean it up, then they owe us. Period.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

Perhaps Rand Paul supporters are not as whackadoodle as everyone would like to believe.

I supported him. I liked the idea of a Ron Paul Junior. But I think his recent performance and statements are shite.

--Anthony



"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

"You can lose a quark you don't girth." -Dreamtrove's words to live by, translated by Ipad

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Originally posted by Kirkules:
I think that BP has been the most environmentally responsible oil company in the word for years and this is just a terrible accident. Everyone that drives an automobile shares equal responsibility for this spill, they should and will help pay for the cleanup.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

Kaneman, he won't even remain firm in stance on civil rights laws. He ought to at least say what he believes in without any wishy washyness.

I know where I draw my lines on such laws and why. I'd respect him more if he held a firm, predictable conviction.

I lost a lot of respect for Mccain when he started angling for the presidency, and many of his cherished beliefs blew away in the wind of presidential ambition.

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Originally posted by piratenews:
Yeah, let's shut down the entire US economy and live in caves...

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Originally posted by Kirkules:
I think that BP has been the most environmentally responsible oil company in the word for years and this is just a terrible accident. Everyone that drives an automobile shares equal responsibility for this spill, they should and will help pay for the cleanup.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

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Originally posted by Kirkules:
I think that BP has been the most environmentally responsible oil company in the word for years and this is just a terrible accident. Everyone that drives an automobile shares equal responsibility for this spill, they should and will help pay for the cleanup.

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Hello,

What a startling point of view, Kirk.

If a pizza deliveryman runs you over with his car, are all pizza customers responsible for the accident?

--Anthony

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Originally posted by Kirkules:

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

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Originally posted by Kirkules:
I think that BP has been the most environmentally responsible oil company in the word for years and this is just a terrible accident. Everyone that drives an automobile shares equal responsibility for this spill, they should and will help pay for the cleanup.

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Hello,

What a startling point of view, Kirk.

If a pizza deliveryman runs you over with his car, are all pizza customers responsible for the accident?

--Anthony

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Of course the pizza customer is liable and so is every person who eats that companies pizza. Who do you think pays the pizza boys car insurance. No business ever pays for anything, their customers do. That's why the idea of taxing businesses is so laughable, it's just a way of fooling gullible taxpayers into thinking big business is getting taxed, when in reality the tax is passed on to the consumer of their product.

You all are like a bunch of squeamish school kids touring a slaughter house a day after your parents took you out for a big steak dinner. You just need to face the fact that you share some of the responsibility for the slaughter of the cow and understand that your choices have consequences.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
"You just need to face the fact that you share some of the responsibility for the slaughter of the cow and understand that your choices have consequences."

Hello,

I hate to say it, but I agree, Kirk.

We need to be willing to liquidate our oil company if necessary to pay for our liability in fostering our disaster.

And then we need to be willing to tax ourselves by fining our other industries whenever we let them step out of line. And if we have to sue ourselves (in the body of our industries) whenever we fail ourselves, then we should do it.

And we will continue to punish, and sue, and tax ourselves as much as is necessary until we learn to operate safe industries.

--Anthony

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
So, Kirk, in your world, exactly how much responsibility DOES Colt share for the Columbine slaughter?

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Originally posted by Kirkules:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
So, Kirk, in your world, exactly how much responsibility DOES Colt share for the Columbine slaughter?

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Exactly the same responsibility as Pizza Hut does if I throw one of their pizzas at you (assuming it's fresh and not to hot).

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a key part of the oil pipe's Blow Out Preventer was damaged days before the explosion

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A 2008 report authored by officials of BP America and Transocean and published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers raised new questions about whether the blowout preventers on deepwater wells such as the one the Deepwater Horizon was drilling could have a new problem.
Blowout preventers, or BOPs, which weigh 500,000 pounds and are roughly as tall as a five-story building, activate rams that punch a hole in the pipeline connecting the well to the surface, and then block the pipeline. The rams, the report said, may have "difficulty shearing today's high-strength, high-toughness drillpipe" used in deepwater wells.
The 10-page report, delivered at the 2003 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, suggests that the industry was so focused on drilling that it was willing to pay higher maintenance costs to keep rigs operating and avoid downtime rather than address some of the fundamental problems with the blowout preventers.

"Floating drilling rig downtime due to poor BOP (blowout preventer) reliability is a common and very costly issue confronting all offshore drilling contractors," the report said, adding that every major disruption could cost $1 million.

The report said the reliability issues were directly related to the fact that drilling companies didn't have detailed design and functional specifications to give companies that manufactured blowout preventers.

The preventers were being rushed into the field with limited testing, and if one malfunctioned, the pressure to keep drilling meant it was fixed with little time spent trying to figure out what had caused the malfunction.

"Because of the pressure on getting the equipment back to work, root cause analysis of the failures is generally not performed," the report said. "In many operations, high maintenance is accepted as a necessary evil to prevent downtime."

The report said the problems were mostly with the control system that activates the large rams that punch through the pipe to stop the flow of oil. The control system has electrical and hydraulic components. The electrical circuits activate the hydraulic equipment that moves the rams. Each blowout preventer has two complete control systems as a backup.

"History has shown that more subsea problems have been associated with hydraulic components than the electrical," the report said. Hydraulic problems can only be fixed by bringing the top half of the blowout preventer to the surface.

Crews on the Deepwater Horizon have said they activated the blowout preventer from the deck of the rig before fleeing. The blowout preventer is also equipped with sensors that should trigger a shutdown automatically. U.S. rigs, unlike those in Norway and Brazil, don't have to be equipped with a device to pick up an acoustic signal sent from the surface that also can activate the blowout preventer.

"The control system has historically been a problem area," Shanks said during the telephone interview from Houston, where he's an industry consultant. "The preventer itself is just a big hunk of metal."

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Blankenship said that he didn't know of any steps his company could have taken to prevent the disaster, though the Montcoal mine had received 58 citations in February alone. Blankenship deflected suggestions that his company's coal mines are more dangerous than others.

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The federal records... show the company was fighting many of the steepest fines, or simply refusing to pay them.

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You forgot Anarchist = Bomb throwin nihilist, Mikey.

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and he made the same sort of generalizations and assumptions about Libertarians that Signy did.

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Well presented, Sig, thank you. I didn’t know Paul was giving the same excuse for that incident, when AGAIN, it was proven clearly that the coal company had skipped and/or ignored safety precautions in the name of profit, was under indictment, had been fined, etc., for such actions in the past. It was no “accident”, it was a predictable failure; employees have testified that they didn’t dare complain under threat of losing their jobs, etc., and again, those in charge shirked their responsibility and have been doing so for ages.

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