It has been over 10 years since the skipper of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez drank one too many wobblypops and crashed into Prince William Sound, dumping over 10 millions gallons of oil, ruining a once vigorous fishing industry, killing untold thousands of birds and animals, and wreaking havoc on the environment that only the ages will know the effects.
While the press releases from Exxon tells us of how they rolled up their sleeves and opened up their bank account to clean up the environment, the truth is millions of gallons of oil remain, the salmon are diseased and sterile, and thousands of fisherman's careers and families lay in ruins.
In 1994 a jury fined Exxon 5 billion dollars to be paid to the fishermen, tribes and companies. So a happy ending, right?
Well, far from it. To date not a single penny of the fine have been paid. While Exxon makes billions of dollars in profits in a year, they have yet to help a single person. But Exxon is not in the people business. They are in the business of making
money. And in a big way.
Exxon has refused to pay because they think the fine was excessive. But what is excessive is their greed.
Incredibly, the Exxon corporate bean-counters have found a silver lining in the the five billion dollar fine: Profit. By paying a cadre of lawyers a paltry few milliom to keep the fine tied up in the courts on appeal, Exxon
makes over 400 million dollars a year in interest.
This is what you'll get in a country of the corporate interests, by the corporate interests, and for the corporate interests.
