Friday, August 24, 2012

LEADERS: EXTRAVAGANCES

...and arm-twists BP with open threats – is this ethical, if not illegal?

Secondly, if 11 people died in the BP spill, the 440,000 who die every year in the US due to tobacco use and the $200 billion this industry costs US every year are bigger reasons why Obama and Emanuel should be threatening the powerful cigarette manufacturers to pay much more than the total of $206 billion they have to pay over 25 years under the Master Settlement Agreement they brilliantly signed with 46 US states in 1998, when the Democrats were in power.

Is Obama doing that? Not at all. While the BP CEO Tony Hayward was chastised openly by Rahm Emanuel for attending a yacht race and publicly humiliated by Obama (who said his meetings with affected parties have educated him on “whose ass to kick”; and that he would have kicked out Hayward), Obama himself was playing golf at Andrews Air Base. And Putin? He was watching with amusement the Moscow court proceedings against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.