George R RE #5 -- Thom has often mentioned at the beginning of our country every corporation automatically died after 20 years. They were required to go through a bunch of paper work to continue on. What happened to that process? Did charter mongering do away with it?

Corporate death penalty for BP? Thom, how? They are not subject to the kind of in personam jurisdiction ( "against the person". In personam refers to courts' power to adjudicate matters directed against a party, as distinguished from in-rem proceedings over disputed property.) required to transfer a company into receivership and dismantle it. This is BP's address:

BP p.l.c.
1 St James's Square
London, SW1Y 4PD
United Kingdom

We, theoretically, could delist BP from the NYSE. I rather doubt that the act could be done - if, for no other reason, the decision would have to pass through the Robert's Court and John Roberts is no enemy of BP.

Years and years ago when I was but a young lad I asked that corporate death penalty question of a professor of mine (who was teaching the 2L debtor-creditor course at the time - his scholarship has been cited by by the SCT in bankruptcy decisions several times since then) and his response was that the corporate death penalty did more harm than good. That the employees of the company and their families would be harmed, as would the businesses (and, their employees, and investors) that had done nothing wrong but to enter into business with the malefactor. That certain classes of investor have no direct control over their investments - like retirement plan administrators' decisions - the worker has no say (today's defined benefit plans ("pensions") exist for the very, very highly compensated and for government workers) in the investment and they would lose everything invested in the "executed" company. The ripple effects (externalities) would cause harms far greater than restructuring the entity through legal process to prevent future damages and compensate those suffering harms.

Prof. Warner has a point. What we don't have is a properly functional regulatory system and Tort system. Tortdeform (as we plaintiff's counsel refer to it) was an incredibly effective tool of unscrupulous industry and the insurance industry to shift blame to the victims and limit recovery by capping damages.

Why don't we have a corporate death penalty? Well, we do - we bankrupt certain companies - but (you know what's coming) BP is too big to bankrupt. China is the market to end all markets and the US is, effectively, only a giant military state where trade matters come to loggerheads.

I do not condone, nor do I suggest that the hypothetical I am about to make is moral - it is ethical by our current standards (and, those should be changed):

How to effect corporate change in the short run: Try and then fine and execute the entire chain of decision-makers in the entity. Turn the decision makers and their families into paupers and kill the highly-educated/comfortable executives responsible for the disaster. That would work for a short while - as with all things of this nature the entity would soon employ useful idiots with the correct titles - and the "masterminds" would just step back a bit as things continued on. So, even hypothetically, a corporate death sentence is unworkable.

Ultimately, Thom, the answer lies within the contents of the brilliant letter published by Prof. Garrett Hardin in Science Magazine in 1968 - The Tragedy of the Commons - that can be read here: http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html

They love, what Chomsky calls, the "third world model" where a small minority does well, the greater mass is poor, ignorant, illiterate, desperate and miserable and no middle class to speak of.

Mathboy - and this relates to BP & Deepwater Horizon HOW?

When I went to graduate school at the University of Texas in 1963, the (Democratic) State government provided over 90% of the University's budget. In 2014, the Republican dominated state government provides 13%. Why are we surprised that tuition costs for the student have exploded? Conservatives no longer believe an educated citizen is more valuable than a non-educated one. (If they ever did.)

I actually agree on reducing the military. I'd take it a step further, and reduce the tax burden by a proportionate amount. I think, too, that the other smaller, more socialist countries are able to focus on their domestic issues because they more or less gave up on their militaries. They have token armies, but they know that if anything ever happened to them, the US would be there for them. Particularly those European countires who are in NATO. Do you think the Norwegians sleep easy at night because they know their army will keep Russia at bay should Russia decide to attack? Or, do they not even bother trying to field a formidable army, because they know we are on their side?

There was a 20/20 or Dateline special a few years ago where they interviewed a farmer in Alabama. They were asking him about why he uses immigrant labor. He said he still advertises for seasonal help in the local paper, but never gets any responses from the locals. He said you could offer $20 an hour, and no one would still want to do the work. He was faced with two options: immigrant labor, or watching his crop (I believe it was peaches) die on the trees.

Off of the fields, I agree that corporations exploit foreign labor. And the Democrats have made any mention of immigration laws into a racist thing. They are just as guilty in the immigration problem as the Republicans. They make people affraid to say anything about it, for fear of being labeled as "racist".

There is a third option is your "military is eating us alive" theory - do something, get eaten, or, profit from it. Either by joining the military, working indirectly for it, or buying stock in defense companies. I know people who fit into all three of those categories. I'm not saying it's moral. I'm just saying that you can both try to change the world, and still participate in the current system.

On a related note, and back to the point of Thom's blog, I downloaded this awesome App (I saw it on the Colbert Report) that tells you what political parties different companies support. You scan a barcode, and it will tell you how much that company gave to each political party. That way you can speak with your wallet, which will have the biggest effect. They should make similar Apps for pollution, where you can scan a barcode and see how much that company pollutes. Then it might also give you more environmentally friendly options.

Thanks for the welcome back! I've been reading from time to time. I quit responding because I realized I was sending out very negative vibes. I wrote a rather long response that was pretty harsh to the baby boomers. I read it before I posted it, deleted it, and walked away for awhile. No sense sending negativity out into the world.

At any rate, yes, I did once toy with the notion of leaving the US. Specifically, I wanted to go to New Zealand. When I took their online immigration questionairre, I found out that they didn't want me because I didn't have an advanced degree, or enough money to invest in their stock market. Now I have both, but I'm too old to go starting over like that.

Anyway, I was just meshing up some points to come to my conclusion:

1. Other counties have it better than us. Specifically Northern and Western European and Asian countries. (I hear this constantly in my field. American public schools always drag behind Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Singapore, etc...)

2. Those countries also have much stricter immigration laws than the US.

3. Those countries actually enforce their immigration laws. They don't want Americans there, or any other outsiders.

So, my conclusion, which sounds like a GOP talking point:

4. We, too, would be much better off with stricter immigration laws that we actually enforced. i.e. "blame the immigrants".

In Texas, you have to show a photo ID (no one looks at the photo) to vote. But as an Election Judge, I don't present any ID to pick up the voting "computer" or other election materials. They just wanted the precinct number. In fairness, I did show them my writ, but I don't think they needed it.

Of course the truth is that no one in their right mind could get away with stealing the voting computer, someone would notice. But the same is true for 100,000 people voting illegally. Somebody would notice something amis.

Of course if you made being an Election Worker too much of a hassle, we would very, very quickly find out about it. The same is not true about voters, whom we think are too lazy, stupid and shiftless to begin with.

It just breaks my heart, one great 18 year old kid who volunteers with us at Food Not Bombs Saturdays is real bright, worked real hard to get good grades in high school, never got into trouble though he grew up in an area with very heavy gang activity, completely sober - doesn't smoke, drink or drug - but he can't even think about going to college, it just costs too much. He graduated high school last year and now works in a local movie theater checking ticket stubs or selling popcorn. His mother worked hard all her life but now has a bad shoulder and can't lift more than 10 lbs. (don't know what's up with his father).

When I was his age everybody could go to college, certainly a kid like he is would. It is such an outrageous waste of talent and grossly unjust denial of opportunity that he can't even think about it. Are we back to the 19th century where a kid could start working in the coal mines at 11 years of age and continue there for the rest of his life and never even imagine anything better for himself - and consider himself to be "arrogantly" stepping out of his station for even dreaming so? Is that the conservative perfect world where only a small minority can live well and the rest are livestock for their use and consumption?

ChicagoMatt ~ Let me begin by saying, "Welcome back! We've missed you."

Now back to what you've said to Aliceinwonderland, you could not be more off base. Alice was clearly talking about Americans leaving this country. Perhaps you are oblivious to this because you have never contemplated leaving this country. However, you can take it from those of us who have, that it is not that easy of a task to do.

Personally, as far as I am concerned, I think the GOP should welcome anyone who wants to immigrate here form a third world banana republic. After all, that is what the GOP and their collective sponsors have turned this country into anyway. Where else are they going to find workers to work for them for the starvation wages they want to pay if they do not recruit people from banana republics to do all the work for them?

There really is no way to compare American refugees to American immigrants. If you really want to do that you really should consider writing science fiction novels for the blind and ignorant.You would have them "coming" and "going" if you will. Pardon the pun.

Welcome back Matt! You've been sorely missed!!

Douglas M RE #11 -- We (Thom, many membrs of this blog and me) do not want to even use the carbon that is currently in the ground. Why do you not think there is not enough evergy from renewables, solar panels etc?

Nuclear energy can never be a safe technology as long as the profit margin is part of the equation. Also, nuclear has been stopped in Germany and a lot in Japan.

Alice - I think you inadvertently supported a Republican argument just now. Countries with better border security and stricter immigration have better social structures within the countries, right? That's just a whisper away from "Immigration, both legal and illegal, is destorying the United States."