Joke Of The Day
by tristero
Now here's a real corker to brighten your day. First the set up...if the news articles are accurate, the Justice Department should bring criminal charges against BP, and possibly Transocean and Halliburton, for violations of the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Refuse Act — the same charges brought in the Exxon Valdez case.
And now....drum roll, maestro, please!....the punch-line!!!!Exxon ultimately paid a criminal fine of $125 million, the largest ever for an environmental crime.
Isn't that just hilarious? Remind me to laugh once I finish hurling.
(Actually, the entire op-ed is very good, a cogent summary, by an expert... what a concept! someone who knows what he's talking about... as I was saying, by an expert in the law covering environmental crimes. The bad news: the only people who might be liable for jail time are the low-level employees: it will be very hard under present law to build a case against the real crooks here. I do think, also, that the author doesn't quite grok the nature of public opinion, if he thinks that people weren't utterly enraged at the Exxon Valdez disaster: people forget and tempers cool over the very long, very tortuous course of legal proceedings. The very same thing will happen here, beyond any shadow of a doubt. Maybe BP will have to pay more than $125 million. Assuming the leak is 4 times the size of the Exxon spill, they'll simply argue for a cap of $500 million.
Yeah. That'll show 'em. )