Pop quiz.
You’re CEO of a large oil company and your company just had a catastrophic oil leak. What’s the first thing you do? A) Try to clean up the goddamn oil has fast as possible. B) Build a giant stupid fucking concrete box. Or C) Trick surviving workers into signing an agreement saying they won’t sue the company?
If you picked C then you’re a fucking businessman:
In the aftermath of last month’s explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, all the survivors wanted to do was get to dry land and call their loved ones. Yet for more than 24 hours, they were told to stay on ships on the water.
One reason was that the Coast Guard wanted to get information about the explosions on the rig and what caused them. And the company that owned the oil rig Deepwater Horizon also wanted answers.
Coast Guard officers boarded the supply boat, the Damon Bankston, soon after it picked up survivors, including Deepwater Horizon crew member Christopher Choy, from the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard wanted to know what caused the explosion, and the officers wanted witness statements.
Choy, a young roustabout on the rig, was handed a form to fill out, asking what he’d seen. “They came on there, and they gathered everybody in the galley on the boat and handed out … papers and stuff saying, ‘[These are] statements. You need to sign these. Nobody’s getting off here until we get one from everybody.’ ”
But when Choy read the Coast Guard form, he didn’t like what he saw. “At the bottom, it said something about, like, you know, this can be used as evidence in court and all that. I told them, I’m not signing it,” Choy says. “Most of the people signed it and filled them out. I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it.” Choy shared his story at length with NPR and the PBS program NewsHour, in one of the most extensive interviews from a survivor of the April 20 rig blast.
The Coast Guard acknowledges it kept the men on the water in part so its investigators could get statements. But Choy says he thought the man who gave him the form said he was a lawyer with BP, the oil company. BP says it had no investigators or lawyers there.
Choy didn’t sign the Coast Guard form. But he’d come to regret that he didn’t refuse the next time he was asked to sign something.
[...]
But before they could go home, there was one more form and one more attempt to get the survivors to give information. At the hotel, there were representatives for Transocean who asked Choy to initial a line that said: I was not injured as a result of the incident or evacuation.
Choy had seen men with open wounds and burning flesh. He knew 11 of his friends were dead. He felt he was among the lucky ones.
Exhausted and just wanting to get home with Monica, he signed.
[...]
Gordon says Choy can’t go back to his old job on the rig. He’s being treated for nightmares and flashbacks.
And when Choy sued his employer, Transocean wrote back and said: But you signed that form. You said you weren’t injured.
I’m not surprised by this. I mean, this is the same company that offered people living on the gulf coast 5,000 dollars not to sue.
What I am surprised about is how little BP will have to pay for the oil leak (75 million thanks to our fucking government) compared to how much money they made in the first quarter (5.6 billion, a 135 percent increase over the first quarter of 2009). Which, if my math is correct, is only 1.15 percent of their first quarter profits.
So to reiterate: BP fucks up the entire gulf coast, ruins thousands of lives, and kills a shit ton of animals and they only have to pay 1.15 percent of their first quarter profits; while I smoke one joint, ruin no lives, and give my dog the greatest belly rub of all time and I get arrested.
Get fucked America.
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