I’m worried that people might not understand this. It’s not about crime. It’s about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which made me muse about how it would be for garden-variety criminals to be treated like white-collar corporate thugs.
Blue Collar Crime, White Collar Time
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
9 Comments. Leave new
The bit about “Congressional Hearings” and “Daytime Cable TV” made your point extremely clear to me. Who’s been on cable congressional hearings recently? A parade of bankers and oil execs. Few people will fail to get that reference. Very amusing.
Of course, the dead-enders will complain that oil drilling is not like murder whatsoever, the companies have our best interests at heart and they are not intentionally _trying_ to kill anybody or anything… but I think you’ve made your point quite well. I think most people will see that you used an axe murderer for comic effect, but the philosophical point would have been the same had you used a hit-and-run driver, who wasn’t _trying_ to kill an innocent schoolgirl at a crosswalk… Doesn’t matter, the driver will still do time. The oil execs won’t. And your point is also that equating “regulation” with “punishment” is ludicrous, even though everybody talks like they’re the same thing.
Your philophical point is well taken, kwohlmut, whatever that is. It still doesn’t change the fact that the execs in question (I assume you mean BP, not Halliburton or Transocean) have not been charged with any crime yet. Litigation will ensue (it already has) and the outcomes are anyone’s guess (I’m betting on the deceased workers’ families getting some compensation, and various layers of government getting a far fatter chunk). Anyways, the situation is as nuanced as a traffic fatality (not a hit-and-run though, where you have the guilty partner fleeing the scene), which makes the axe-murderer comparison, just, uh, caricatural.
What was the crime committed and by whom?
Hoof and Mouth Disease by a Highway
us 395,
if you’re not for real you are a troll with very good acting skills, I must admit…
let’s see… the current oil “spill”, financial shenanigans (which now make up a double digit percentage of your economy), enron style profiteering on utilities that left people in the dark and essentially bankrupted california, getting ridiculous pay from the DoD on no bid contracts for projects which were never intended to go forward, credit card tricks, mortgage small print which never would be legal in any civilized country, building a company using 100s of fictitious entities (using names from the star wars universe in the case of enron, the brightest guys…) so that when it all crashes you cheat employees of their retirement funds, big pharma buying senators to ensure the government doesn’t haggle drug prices, …
we could go on…
the crime and the perpetrators?: the richest 1% coming back for the rest of the economy… haven’t been paying attention or are you cool with “market capitalism” and the “free market” (not that anything mentioned above has anything to do with those fictitious notions)
Hey guys, just chill out…Kevin Costner is going to save us with his deep see oil slick vacuum.
Very funny cartoon, Ted
Wow andreas, BP did all of that?
>>>Wow andreas, BP did all of that?>>>
Yeah, US395, BP did all of that. Now get your head out of the teabag.
The irony is, all the money BP spent on marketing itself as a “green” energy company cannot placate the ire of the loonie Left. Let that be a lesson to PR staff elsewhere.