While I Wasn't Blogging: News You Might Have Missed

When I was a kid, my parents (posterity and my mother would like me to note that credit here is in fact due to my grandparents) got me a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. Through reading that magazine I learned about meerkats, cool bugs, and why chopping down the rain forest is bad. I also learned about the Exxon Valdez.

You remember the Exxon Valdez.







To put the following paragraphs in context, in February of 2008 Exxon announced the largest quarterly profits that any U.S. company has ever reported. Ever. Profits so high that the corporation made approximately $1,300 a second in 2007.

$1,300 a second.

Puts our offshore drilling "debate" in perspective, no?

Given that reality, I find it beyond appalling that our highest court in the land (emphasis, apparently, on "high") reversed the $2.5 billion dollar ruling against Exxon in the Exxon Valdez case as "excessively punitive." Excessively punitive to a company that made $2.5 billion dollars in less than three days last year.

Is it even possible to punish this in excess?



According to the Supreme Court, the "reasonable" cost of atonement for the Exxon Valdez oil spill is not $2.5 billion, but $507 million — an amount which the corporation is projected to make in less than one day. And that $2.5 billion was already down from the $5 billion that Exxon was originally ordered to pay by "a jury of its peers."

But see, Exxon doesn't have any peers. Except for maybe Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who had to recuse himself from the case because he owns Exxon stock.

Of the people, by the people.