BP Hit with Largest-Ever OSHA Fine of $87 Million

uberVU - social comments 3 months, 1 week ago on Wordpress

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This post was mentioned on Twitter by PeoplesWorld: AFL-CIO: BP Hit with Largest-Ever OSHA Fine of $87 Million http://bit.ly/1trtZR...

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Retired nurse 3 months, 1 week ago on Wordpress

About time the companies are being made to do the right thing. This is another area where change is needed!!

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JerryWells 3 months, 1 week ago on Wordpress

The oil companies typically refuse to correct dangerous work conditions, clean up vast environmental damage, refuse any responsibility for promoting global warming, and certainly don’t give a damn about the “killing 15 people, the explosion injured 170 workers and obliterated 13 employee trailers and damaged 13 others, some as far as 300 yards away.”

Why don’t fines and multi-million dollar judgements cause any change in behavior of these multi-national corporations? A main reason is that these

huge penalties are “chump change” to the vast multi-billion dollar profits being made by these corporate giants. In the last year or so, companies like

Exxon-Mobil (?) made historic profits of over $40 BILLION PROFIT in just one quarter (3 months!).

The oil companies would much rather pay a few relatively minor fines that allows them to maximize their profits. The tens of billions in huge profits will easily pay off the million dollar fines. The oil companies are willing to pay hundreds of millions in lawyers fees, bribes to local governments, support

the arrest and execution of protesting 8 environmentalists (Nigeria?),

destroy vast areas of the Amazon home of local indigienous people, as all these practices are necessary to maximize profit and wealth accumulation.

OIL PROFIT is the core reason why the U.S. has invaded the Middle East and Central Asia. The unending wars for oil, initiated by the Texas Bush/Cheney (and now Obama) oil gang, has further bankrupted the economy of this country.

Corporate lobbying and campaign contributions by the oil industry, along with the military industries forever seeking profit from war, has led to the impoverishment of working people and the destruction of essential social services. Funding to help the states (like California) maintain public health,

public education, public works funding for job creation, etc. are simply not available as funds needed for the common good have been for years diverted into the pockets of these gangsters.

The only solution is to demand that the entire energy industry be socialised. Socialisation, not some temporary nationalisation, of the oil, gas, coal, nuclear, electrical, companies etc. would mean these industries would be directed by the needs of society for sustainable, non-polluting energy. The motivation for wars for profit would end. The major factors affecting global warming would at last be taken away from capitalists who have caused this crisis in human survival.

The socialisation of the energy industry means worker management and control of that industry. The new sustainable technologies (solar, wind, etc.) could be finally implemented that would lead to millions of new “living wage” jobs here in the U.S. and throughout the world. The “clean up” of the environment is going to create millions of jobs.

A new labor movement, realizing the destructive nature of capitalism, must break away from being a “business partner” to the system of economics that is destroying us all. A new political party, representing the needs of all working people, must be created to break away from slavishly supporting the Democratic Party.

All attempts to “reform” capitalism or to try to “fine” or penalize capitalist corporations into a different behavior, are forever doomed to failure. The problems generated by capitalism are intrinsic to capitalism. The vast majority of people will continue to be impoverished, without health care, without education, and killed in unending wars for profit.

A transition to a socialist economy “of, by and for” the people is essential to the survival of working people and humanity worldwide.

Read further on the socialist perspective

at the World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org ... See all content Hide content

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