











Comments     Threshold


Doesn't this go both ways?
By Solandri on 6/23/2010 11:44:51 AM , Rating: 5

The AP report also said that he owned stock in other oil companies via mutual funds, which as most investors know are usually broad sector-based funds which are comprised of dozens if not hundreds of companies.

I was thinking about this. Start with the assumption that owning stock in an oil company represents a financial conflict of interest for a judge - he has something to lose/gain so he may be biased towards an oil company. Doesn't the opposite hold too? If you own lots of stock, but not in any oil companies, especially if he has mutual funds, doesn't that indicate pre-bias against oil companies? Say he's been investing in stocks for years, but he's conspicuously avoiding oil companies. Isn't that a clear sign that he's biased, and thus should be disqualified too?

In other words, if a judge invests in stocks and you want the greatest odds of getting a fair and impartial judge, you should be seeking one who invests in oil companies in proportion to their representation in the stock market. A judge with too much oil stock is bad. But a judge with too little oil stock is also bad.

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By Scabies on 6/23/2010 12:19:42 PM , Rating: 1
its too bad we cant claim conflict of interests against the current administration in the selfish decisions they make.

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By superstition on 6/23/10, Rating: -1
RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By ebakke on 6/23/2010 12:53:56 PM , Rating: 4
Did you even read his post?

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By superstition on 6/23/10, Rating: 0
RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By Samus on 6/24/2010 3:17:18 AM , Rating: 3
You spew liberal 'facts' like Fox news spews conservative 'facts'

Everybody is wrong. Meanwhile, nobody seems to be doing shit to stop the fucking leak. Worry about "who done it" when the time is right. There isn't going to be another rig explosion in the next 6 months.

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?

Facts are facts.

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
By knutjb on 6/23/2010 1:59:38 PM , Rating: 5
But its OK that Obama received more money from BP employees than any other politician? Or maybe that the MMS was about to give that rig safety awards? Could the fact that Obama buddy George Soros has $600M+ investment in PetroBras and that the IMF, through the US, gave them, PetroBras a private company, $2B of mostly US money to drill in deep water off Brazil.

From legal commentators I have heard the vast majority said the Gov stepped too far with a vaguely written document. That was the reason for throwing it out. The Judge said that they had overstepped their legal bounds.

I just saw a clip where Ken Salazar said he did intend to shutdown all new wells starting at 500'. The Feds don't get much in the way of royalties if wells are drilled inside state's waters but do if they are past them.

So is the Judge biased or are those in the Fed Gov biased? Given the Judges response and reasoning I'll go with his answer. Obama did say he would appeal and that IS how the system is designed to work.

There is more than one side to a story...

RE: Doesn't this go both ways?



RE: Doesn't this go both ways?
Seriously... Who comes up with this crap?
By BriteLite on 6/23/2010 10:59:13 AM , Rating: 3
Sorry, only thing I see here is garbage, and it's being proliferated.

I'm sorry but $15,000.00 is a joke. This won't make an adult with probably 100's of thousands if not several million in investments, bias. Jesus I have more money in my highest risk stock portfolios and barely think twice up, down whatever. It's a fraction of a %. And frankly I doubt he went out buying individual stocks he probably has some ownership through a 401k. And any American who contributes to a 401k better look at each funds holdings because guess what... ding ding ding you are invested in oil. If you have a problem with that make sure to give all profit from the funds back to uncle sam at the end of the Tax year... you know the line that asks if you wish to pay more... yea liberals do that sure, ask Mr. Geithner.

This is nothing more than a Joe the Plumber witch-hunt because the O' administration didn't get their lollipop. Their lollipop is a complete pendulum swing to take our economy further into the tank. You can't cut our dependence on oil for transportation cold-turkey. People will riot in the street, and their will be blood. We first have to have economical alternatives and WE DON'T HAVE THEM.

Thanks for posting this absolute Garbage on a tech site... frankly what we need more of is more trash posted at more locations so people can be influenced to think that this judge was bias in the least...

Anand... really? This is what your site has become? Posting Green, left posts with no digging on the truth and merit behind these potential accusations? If these little lefties wish to post this rubbish have them take it to their own blog, don't discredit yourself with this trash.

Kick your Liberal loving, left leaning, world be doomed contributors on their asses and see how they like looking for actual work, that requires actual productivity.

RE: Seriously... Who comes up with this crap?
By bill4 on 6/23/2010 11:29:49 AM , Rating: 3
Yeah and I wonder if the media reports every time some judge sides with the EPA, what "green" companies stock he owns that stand to benefit. Of course they dont, I've certainly never seen such a thing, have you?

I've seen some reporting on the stocks Gore owns that will benefit from cap and trade, but only from Fox News and the few other moderate media outlets, never the ultra left wing mainstream media such as CNN, ABC, Time, MSNBC, CBS, US News, NY Times, LA Times, Newsweek, etc etc etc etc.

Nice "free" media we have, free meaning owned by communists.

By BriteLite on 6/23/2010 11:52:38 AM , Rating: 2
Clearly I struck an ill-cord with my rating on the parent here but good grief folks wake the hell up.

Obviously we live in a media biased world, we see it right here on our tech site.
"Judge has ties to oil industry and owns stock in major companies involved in the spill"

Yea... sure.

I get your point, gosh you couldn't me more dead-on with the comments about Gore. No one even cares or listens. Granted you also don't hear that the O' administration giving a credit to Brazil of what like $10 Billion? And this was a shuffle pot, as the end-user is PetroBras... also interesting... is if we shut down drilling, can we guess where the drillers will go? I'll give everyone one guess. (Starts with a Bra... ends with Zil)
Get it? Oh and should I even mention Soros? I mean really? Would anyone go look for the truth between PetroBras, Soros and ding our Child in chief?

Now we hear that we have Thousands of skimmers throughout the East Coast, that could have helped contain a huge % of the spill, but that would take the union dollars out of the gulf so that's a no no. Federal government kept those skimmers away. The Feds have now restricted LA's work in building the barrier islands... What? The handling of this whole thing has been beyond horrible, it's tragic. We have a child in the office of president who has yet to take real Action on anything, oh sure... lots of hopey and changey but nothing done. (Well 40 rounds of golf) This child lives in a fairly tale land of milk and endless honey where wishes come true and lollipops consumed.

I'm coming to a realization that at this point bring back Bush because damn... even he is better than this child of little thought in office.

Damn doesn't reality suck?

This administration knew about this over a MONTH before the disaster and did... NOTHING.
So... all you lefties out there that are a little hot and bothered now, explain away. How in the world can your boy king be held responsible... I mean... this is clearly Bush's fault.

By Ammohunt on 6/23/2010 2:24:35 PM , Rating: 2
College marxist know nothings are a dime a dozen these days. Now that they have power their true nature is exposed lets hope we can pull out of this nose dive into the abyss without significant violence.

By Spuke on 6/23/2010 4:42:55 PM , Rating: 2
Oh please. The nose dive's been happening ever since America decided that two parties is the only way to go. All anyone's going to do is vote the Retards I mean Repubs back in office. Same toilet bowl but the water goes the other direction.

2008 != 2010
By kattanna on 6/23/2010 11:10:10 AM , Rating: 4

in 2008 he did, it says nothing of what he owns now

RE: 2008 != 2010
By ClownPuncher on 6/23/2010 2:12:20 PM , Rating: 3
Personally, I simply don't care what he is invested in. We trusted him enough to hire him, now he has the job and has to do the best he can.

Stopping all offshore drilling is possibly even more damaging to the economy than the oil spill itself. It was a shortsighted, reactionary move. Banning drilling is not a move I can support. I hope the appeal fails and this judge sticks to his guns.

By bill4 on 6/23/2010 11:25:26 AM , Rating: 1

By Alan Zibel updated 27 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Sales of new homes collapsed in May, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record as potential buyers stopped shopping for homes once they could no longer receive government tax credits.

Analysts were startled by the depth of the sales drop. "We all knew there would be a housing hangover from the expiration of the tax credit," wrote Mike Larson, real estate and interest rate analyst at Weiss Research. "But this decline takes your breath away."

There are no jobs because of environmental restrictions and specifically EPA CO2 caps. This is only going to get worse as long as the EPA CO2 caps remain and the recovery is a myth. This bodes very well for Republicans in November and beyond.

Good job Dailytech, sealing Obama's fate daily by helping destroy the economy with environmental regulations stopping all job growth.

By bill4 on 6/23/2010 11:34:29 AM , Rating: 2
Path to growth:

Republicans decimate Dems in 2010 due to bad economy from CO2 hard caps on all economic growth.

However, this will not be enough votes to override Obama's veto. The EPA caps will remain, and the economy will stagnate through 2012.

2012, the Republican nominee for president, under a cratering economy, easily defeats Obama. Congress passes a bill rescinding EPA authority to regulate CO2, and now there's no presidential veto.

Even that may not happen, if Dems filibuster. They probably wont by that point though.

For sure the economy means cap and trade is utterly dead in Congress this year though.

Obama Adm Lied
By ZachDontScare on 6/23/2010 3:02:44 PM , Rating: 2
I didnt see in the article, but the judge also pointed out that the Obama Administration blatently lied about 'experts' recommending a moratorium. A panel of 'experts' did make recommendations, and then the Admin slipped the moratorium in *after* the fact and claimed the experts suggested it. That was a complete and total lie, and the experts on the panel called the administration on that because they most definately did *not* recommend a moratorium.

By omnicronx on 6/23/10, Rating: -1
RE: actually..
By Danish1 on 6/23/2010 11:02:54 AM , Rating: 3
This man should close his trap.. If an airliner has a crash due to maintenance issues, do they merely continue business as usual? NO! Its not uncommon for entire fleets being grounded to check the issue on all their planes.. Why? Because the safety is at risk.

Fleets are only being grounded if there's "hard evidence" pointing at a "general flaw" in an airplane type causing a crash.

Do you know of any such hard evidence in this case?

RE: actually..
By Solandri on 6/23/2010 11:54:43 AM , Rating: 2
Actually, if there are a spate of accidents in a short period of time involving one type of aircraft, they have grounded the fleet of those aircraft for a few days while they do a general investigation to see if there's some commonality.

But what we have here is a single incident. It remains to be seen if it's an outlier (bad luck can strike even those who are assiduous about safety), or indicative of a broader problem affecting the entire industry.* Also, grounding some aircraft for a few days is quite different from shuttering an entire industry for a quarter of a year.

*Given the widescale corruption in the MMA that's been reported, I think the government could argue that they have no clue if the oil companies are complying with regulations, and thus all operations need to be shut down until new inspectors can be trained and new inspections done. The proper course of action in that case would be a 90 day moratorium; but because the fault lies with the government, all affected companies should be financially compensated for the loss of business. In other words, the government needs to pay all those oil companies for lost productivity during those 90 days they're shut down. Not gonna fly with the current deficits and upcoming elections.

RE: actually..
By knutjb on 6/23/2010 2:41:52 PM , Rating: 2
The economic pressure from rigs sitting idle at a million plus a day make a seemingly innocuous government drilling ban an extremely serious issue. Does the Government's mismanagement really justify shutting down an entire industry over one, albeit very serious, problem? Blanket punishment for all for BP's negligence smells fishy.

The government and its green intentions could be using this ban to cripple that entire business in the US. Obama IS pushing Cap & Tax (he was directly involved with creating the CCX-Chicago Carbon Exchange), Green initiatives, writing an executive order to grant amnesty for all illegals, cramming Health Care down our throats, Stimulus that would "fix" our unemployment problems, etc...

Is it unreasonable to question the dear leader's intent? I know he "says" he wants Nuke but until a plant is online I don't trust him. Too many politicians say one thing and do another and he is deeply entrenched in that methodology.

RE: actually..
By yomamafor1 on 6/23/10, Rating: -1
RE: actually..
By BriteLite on 6/23/2010 12:34:45 PM , Rating: 4
Excellent point.
By George I think you are on to something here.

Air France had a massive number of Concorde's I think nearly what? 3800? No perhaps not that many maybe 100? No that's not right either maybe they had 20?

No still not right...

They had 5...


Do you think the statistical sampling is a bit different between the two?

There are 3800 wells... running well for decades and this one event... you want to "Seize" their operations? Are you mad? Or do you actually believe this drivel? Good grief man, with that way of thinking how in the world could anything EVER be made to run at profit? Or are you also against profit as well? Come on... admit it, you'd like to limit the profit oil companies can make because it's evil right? Be honest...

RE: actually..
By Solandri on 6/23/2010 12:35:15 PM , Rating: 2
BOPs are tested weekly to make sure they're operational, sometimes more frequently. So if you want to halt operations until each platform conducts a BOP test, I doubt the industry would have a problem with that.

RE: actually..

RE: actually..

Please excuse my 2nd rate English skills!

RE: actually..
By BriteLite on 6/23/2010 11:16:24 AM , Rating: 2

So let me get this straight...

BP who asked for help in February and advised the administration that they needed assistance because of some fissures and cracks... which then became a full-blown disaster on April 20th more than a MONTH after the administration was contacted points to a flaw in all 3800 wells in the Gulf?

Sure there may be ways to improve the designs and operations of wells, and I'd like to stop putting methane into the air, but one disaster doesn't condone the ban on all future work in the Gulf. It's asinine. This is just what we need another 50-75k workers unemployed, or perhaps even worse is the lifting of the drillers and moving to other countries, because they have to pay for those vessels. That means contracts in the gulf for wells become null and void.

I believe Feldman's point is simple... It's too far of a swing, it's too radical and there is no evidence pointing to what exactly happened yet. So how can we in good faith shut down an industry that has been running well with minimal issues for DECADES, in the <hope> to <change> something we don't yet understand? To me this is the definition of stupidity right now, in our economy.

RE: actually..
Yep shutting everything down is a knee jerk populist reaction.


RE: actually..
RE: actually..
By BriteLite on 6/23/2010 12:46:27 PM , Rating: 2
See... there are some bright spots coming from our educational system... You sir are a credit to your kind.

RE: actually..
By Dorkyman on 6/23/2010 12:48:13 PM , Rating: 1
Wow...where to begin...

You really should read a variety of material besides just the hard-left drivel out there.

You are right about one thing--the Repubs want to bring Messiah down. They (and I) believe him to be utterly incompetent and a danger to the country.

Oh, by the way, no one ever said they wanted AMERICA to fail--Rush said he wanted OBAMA to fail. A different desire, don't you think?

I am also stunned at your racism. No one I know or associate with gives a cr*p about Messiah's skin color. And for the record, technically he's not "black." He's 50% white, 43% Arab, 7% black.

See you at the polls in November. Bring a tissue.

RE: actually..
RE: actually..
By Quadrillity on 6/23/2010 1:15:38 PM , Rating: 2
What happens when the Commander in Chief fails? Here's a hint for your inbred brain cells: America fails.

You know 100% of nothing about our political system, so stop acting like you do, moron.
I must have struck a nerve with you. lol :D President Obama will be this nations best president ever in it's history.

pppffftt....ha...HAHAH...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, you're serious?
Now...don't you have babies to rape? That's what most of you Repubs do, isn't it? Incest? Isn't that your thing?

It's funny that you mention babies. Do you know that Obama supports late term abortion? That's right, Obama is in favor of people shoving a tube in a babies head and sucking its brain out before medically dilating the cervix and passing the dead baby.

I REALLY want to see how you defend that one.

RE: actually..
RE: actually..
By Quadrillity on 6/23/2010 1:29:23 PM , Rating: 2
LOL...and you and the rest of your hypocritical kind are in favor of letting those unwanted babies grow up to the slavery you all try to impose on life.

So now I am a slave master? HAHA
What's worse, killing a baby before first breath or in an illegal military campaign?

So you defend murdering babies right? You need to check yourself into a behavioral health facility. And yes, I am dead serious. You have mental problems.
I don't have to defend anything...idiot. You do though. Because you know in your inner being you are the devil incarnate. You, and the the rest of your horde.

You know, Ben Franklin is the devil also. He did invent electricity, after all.

RE: actually..
RE: actually..

RE: actually..





RE: actually..
RE: actually..





RE: actually..
RE: actually..
You forgot to call us all doo-doo heads.

RE: actually..




1.) If you don't work you don't Vote

Who is willing?

RE: actually..

RE: actually..

RE: actually..
wtf are you talking about?

