The federal government indicted Exxon on five criminal charges, with potential penalties totaling $5 billion. The company soon agreed to plead guilty to three counts, with a fine of $25 million, plus $900 million more in civil fines to be paid over a 10-year period to the government. In addition, the company paid $2.1 billion in cleanup costs and several hundred million dollars more to fishermen for their lost summer catch. In all, the company would pay $3.4 billion.
But the fishing industry, plus businesses affected by the spill and the native Alaskans whose very way of life had been ruined, contended that Exxon had not paid enough. At Exxon's request, the federal court in Alaska certified 32,000 individuals with potentially valid claims to sue as a single group.
In closing arguments, their lawyer asked for between $5 and $20 billion in punitive damages - that is, damages meant not to compensate but to punish and deter such conduct in the future.
Exxon, in closing arguments, said there should be no punitive damages. The jury awarded $5 billion, which after two appeals was reduced to $2.5 billion, or roughly $75,000 per person. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Exxon's latest appeal, prompting this reaction from Alaska's Republican governor, Sarah Palin.
Governor SARAH PALIN (Republican, Alaska): It was like kind of a kick in Alaska's collective gut here, and it's seeming to be a case now of justice delayed being justice denied.
In 1994, a jury awarded plaintiffs US$287 million in compensatory damages and US$5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon appealed and the Ninth Circuit court reduced the punitive damages to US$2.5 billion. Exxon then appealed the punitive damages to the Supreme Court which capped the damages to US$507.5 million in June, 2008. On August 27, 2008, Exxon Mobil agreed to pay 75% of the US$507.5 million damages ruling to settle the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. In June 2009, a federal ruling ordered Exxon to pay an additional US$480 million in interest on their delayed punitive damage awards.
As of 2010 there are approximately 98 cubic metres (3,500 cu ft) or 26,000 gallons) of Valdez crude oil still in Alaska's sand and soil.
In 2009, Sarah Palin wrote this in Going Rogue:
ExxonMobil's litigation compounded the suffering, especially for Cordova and Valdez fishermen. Court challenges stretched for two decades. It took twenty years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor I directed our attorney general to file an amicus brief on behalf on plaintiffs in the case, and, thanks to Alaska's able attorneys arguing in front of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme court ruled in favor of the people. Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.
Not long before the Katie Couric interview, Exxon agreed to pay only 75% of the very much reduced damages and each of the 32,000 plaintiffs would have to be content with a figure shy of $12,000.
Sarah Palin has some very serious memory problems. First she disagreed with a Supreme Court decision that she couldn't remember a few weeks later, then in the space of one year she forgot her disappointment, claiming an insult to the Alaskan fishermen as a victory.
This memory lapse is not an isolated incident. Sarah Palin has a recurring problem recollecting events in her life, what her positions were regarding a number of issues where she later expressed opposite views and appears to be eternally confused...
I managed to record the podcast of a discussion about Sarah Palin's presidential aspirations on Jeremy Vine's program on BBC Radio 2 the other day. Here is a shorter version, as the original ran into nearly 30 minutes:
The British don't appear to have a very good opinion of Sarah Palin, apart from Nadine Dorries, who's not a stranger to funny business herself:
In January 2010, it was revealed that Dorries was being investigated by John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, regarding her claim for second home expenses and that it was expected that a number of neighbours from her constituency were preparing to give evidence against her. It was also revealed that Dorries had claimed £20,000 in office expenses for work undertaken by a media relations and public affairs company.
On May 9th 2010, two days after regaining her Mid Bedfordshire constituency, the The Sunday Times revealed that Dorries was facing the first expenses claims complaint of the new parliament. It was reported that she had claimed around £10,000 for an annual report in 2007 on her performance as an MP, but that her former Commons researcher had never seen the report or worked on it. Dorries insisted that she had indeed published the report, placing a photograph of it on her blog. She subsequently told the Biggleswade Advertiser that the report was never printed and a credit note issued with refund on September 13th 2008.
A couple of people were mentioned in the e-mails sent into the program: Kerry Katona and Davina McCall. So as not to let the references go unnoticed by American readers, here's a brief description of the two lovely ladies:
Kerry Katona used to be in a girl band (Atomic Kitten) and married a boy from a boy band (Brian McFadden, of Westlife). She won "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here," divorced Brian and quickly unravelled , drinking too much and taking too many drugs. She's still regular tabloid fodder in the UK.
Davina McCall is the hyperactive presenter of Big Brother. She's not as colourful as Kerry Katona, but is generally regarded as a pain in the neck and her chat show on BBC was axed due to very poor ratings.
It's refreshing to hear that at least the British didn't fall for Sarah Palin's "charms." Only two pro-Palin opinions from the public were presented on air, but they were more anti-Obama than actually pro-Palin and Jeremy Vine pointed that out when he read them.
Sarah Palin's Alaska has not been inflicted on the British yet, but if it does, I guess that Kerry and Davina's standing would shoot up considerably in the viewing public's estimation...
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By Patrick:
Many thanks to Regina for this post! I also would like to point that that especially the UK Guardian has been following the events of the previous days very closely. The British journalist Ewen MacAskill wrote about Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama in "America by Heart" ("Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama get personal in new book"), and the American journalist Amanda Marcotte wrote in the Guardian a commentary about the content of Palin's new book ("Sarah Palin's heartland Americans"). Both articles linked to Palingates.
There is so much happening surrounding Sarah Palin at the moment, it's simply impossible to make a separate post for each subject. Sarah Palin was yesterday on Hannity, and she confirmed again that she won't talk to journalists in the future who have a "bias." Palin still hasn't overcome her massive grudge against Katie Couric, and she probably never will. The wannabe President of the USA is still angry as hell that she couldn't answer Katie Couric's friendly softball-questions.
It's a huge tragedy that the USA is now being tormented by a woman who combines delusions of grandeur with a severe mental disorder and an unrestrained desire to punish her enemies. It's going to get much worse, as Palin has a good chance of winning the Republican nomination. No serious criticism towards Sarah Palin from other Republican contenders is to be expected, because that would be "sexist", wouldn't it? The insanity will continue.
This video was mentioned in the comments on the last thread and I thought it would be fun to compare it to the actual Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin.
Check it out:
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UPDATE (by Patrick):
For even more fun, please read this hilariously funny fictional interview with Sarah Palin which was written by a concert pianist on his blog. The interview was already created during the presidential campaign in 2008, but it has lost nothing of its genius since then.
What an exciting day we had yesterday! The unexpected email from Christopher Goff, Senior Vice President at Harper Collins, made our day. Many things happened as a result: We made lots of new and important friends, received a large amount of new visitors and the blogsphere showed its muscles and closed ranks in solidarity (many thanks again to Andrew Sullivan, Wonkette and Buzzflash for linking to us). With the new attention we used the unexpected opportunity to get one of our most important messages across to a greatly enlarged audience: That Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy with Trig (it's a FACT, in case you didn't know yet).
Christopher Goff, can we get more emails from you, please?
Palingates and Linda Kellen Biegel's blog "Celtic Diva" were singled out by Harper Collins- why? Other blogs and websites also published extensive excerpts of Sarah Palin's "Book of Lies" - but did they receive a letter by our new friend Christopher Goff? Noooooooooo!
The investigative bloggers are "the" thorn in Sarah Palin's side. We are not afraid of the Quitter Queen, and we are ready to expose her many lies - after all, the MSM has failed on many levels and has for example conveniently overlooked the fact that from an objective point of view, the facts regarding her pregnancy with Trig DO NOT ADD UP. They never have. Believe me: I would not be so stupid to write here as a FACT in public that Sarah Palin had faked her pregancy if I didn't know with 100% certainty that it is indeed a FACT.
Mr Van Flein, do you hear me?
Today I thought it would be a good idea to leave the babygate stuff for now and have some change - there will be many more opportunities to examine her inventions and distortions about her "pregnancy" with Trig in "Going Insane"....pardon, "Going Rogue" in the future.
So I thought: Why not take a closer look at what Sarah Palin has dictated her ghostwriter about Steve Schmidt and Katie Couric!
Let's start with a surprise: Sarah Palin DOES actually have some "good things" to say about McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt! Read this:
Davis made the introductions. First, Steve Schmidt, veteran campaign manager, an imposing, gruff-voiced guy who wore sunglasses atop his bald head in the middle of the night. Schmidt, aka "the Bullet", told me he'd managed Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernational campaign, handled press relations for Dick Cheney, and worked on George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.I knew instantly that Schmidt was business-to-the-bone. I respect that in person, as I'm not one for a lot of chitchat either, and we were very comfortable with each other right off the bat. As a public relations troubleshooter, Schmidt specialized in shaping public opinion. His peers told me he has a laserlike ability to spot chinks in an opponents's armour. He is a guy who inspires loyalty: in spite of his steely exterior, people who work for him really want to please him.
(pages 212, 213)
Haha, I guess Steve Schmidt "the bullet" is firing in the wrong direction now!
Also on page 213, there is a funny quote which she attributes to Steve Schmidt, when Sarah talks about his achievements during the 2004 Bush campaign:
He (Schmidt) was looking for the advantage, and he thought he had found it in Kerry's assertion during the debate that the United States of America needed to pass a "global test" before choosing to act militarily. While the press and the Kerry team were picking apart Bush's performance, Schmidt had found a single, unspent shell he would use to make war. "He told one staffer", "We're going to ram 'global test' right up John Kerry's ass."
Well, I wonder what Steve Schmidt will ram up somebody else's ass after he has read "Going Rogue" in full! ;-)
About ABC's Charlie Gibson, Sarah says that during the "Bush doctrine" interview, he
...peered sceptically at me over his bifocals like a high school principal. (page 271)
Now comes Katie Couric - more than 8 full pages just talking about Katie Couric!
It would probably be difficult to find another person who Sarah Palin ever has hated more in her life. Consequently, the first sentence is:
As for Katie Couric - where do I begin?
(p. 271)
Sarah goes on to say:
If all you know of me comes from that interview, then you don't know me. Needless to say, I have had better interviews. Out of the many, many hours of tape, I had bad moments just like everyone else. I choked on a couple of responses, and in the harried pace of the campaign, I mistakenly let myself become annoyed and frustrated with many of her repetitive, biased questions. What I didn't know was that those few moments would come to define the interviews; they were repeated and mocked so often that everything else has seemingly been forgotten. And that is unfortunate.(p. 271)
Sarah then explains that she believed that there would only be one interview with Katie Couric, and about that one she says:
The first stop was a segment at a hotel near the United Nations, which then turned into a walk-and-talk in front of the UN itself. It didn't go well. I readily admit I did what no politician should ever do - let her annoyance show. I was anxious to get this interview over with and cou could tell, which was my mistake.(p. 272)
Now it comes - poor little Sarah is getting screwed over by CBS and her staffers - as "partners in crime", so to speak...
Ironically, as all this was going through my head, when the walk-and-talk ended and the cameras clicked off, one of the CBS producers, a nice New Yorker with a big presence and a loud voice, walked up to me and started singing my praises. "You did great, Governor, just great! I mean, you just got better and better as you went!"
The Nicolle (Wallace, P.) walked over. "That was great! Now, for tomorrow we're going to---"
"There's going to be a 'tomorrow'?", I asked?
"Yeah, there's another segment - you were really good today."
I thought, Dear Lord, if that's what you call a good interview, then I don't know what a bad one is.
As I walked away, I glanced back and saw Nicolle and Katie share a friendly hug. Then they posed for pictures. (p. 272)
Then Sarah goes on over great length on more then three pages to explain how her CBS interviews with Katie Couric were unfairly edited! It is simply unbelievable. Funnily, "unbelievable" is also the very last word Sarah uses at the end of the "Katie Couric chapter" (although the sub-chapters have no titles).
Here is a part of what Sarah has to say:
Katie and her producers decided on which fraction America would see - and let's just say the emphasis was on my worst moments. Editing footage is nothing new, of course; I created video packages when I worked as a sports reporter. But responsible editing means you keep substance and context, and trim out fat. When I saw the final cut, it was clear that CBS had sought out the bad moments, and systematically sliced out material that would accurately convey my message. The sin of omission was glaring.(p. 272)
Sarah Palin then gives a few examples of what CBS according to her edited out, and then adds:
I knew the media would distort my responses on social issues. But I thought surely they couldn't distort my economics and energy-related responses, because they would have to stick with the facts. I was mistaken.Though Katie edited out substantive answers, she dutifully kept in the moments where I wore my annoyance on my sleeve. For instance, when she asked me how living in Alaska informed my foreign policy experience, I began by trying to frame the geographical context. Lower 48ers grow up seeing our state tucked with Hawaii in a little square off the coast of Mexico on the nightly news weather map. So I began by trying to squeeze a geographical primer into a ten-second sound bite, explaining that only a narrow maritime border separates Alaska from Russia, that we're very near the Pacific Rim countries, and that we're bordered by Canada.But Katie interrupted and I did not complete my answer. I wish now I had stopped her and said, "Here's the geographical context. Now may I answer your question?"(p. 274)
Then Sarah explaines on another full page why her famous "we can see Russia from Alaska" answer wasn't that bad, and how she could have easily expanded her answer and could have said so many more clever things - the only problem is: She didn't. That's a fact. But did Sarah Palin ever care about facts? Certainly not in her conclusion:
But Katie's purpose - shared by most media types - seemed to be to frame a "gotcha" moment. And it worked. Instead of my scoring points for John McCain, I knew that I had let the team down.(p. 275)
Oh, my God, then comes the next Katie Couric interview, and 3 1/2 more pages about it. Katie Couric truly is Sarah Palin's nemesis. A bit like the personified devil, I guess. Sarah writes:
But when I finished (...) Bexie opened the curtain to let me backstage, there was Katie. Again. With a microphone in hand.I tried really hard to smile, but wondered again about a media strategy that involved ignoring objective journalists and continuing with a reporter who clearly had a partisan agenda. In a situation like this, I's have thought expert political strategists would realize that you don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there. But that's what we did.(p. 276)
Bad bad Katie doesn't stop to harrass poor Sarah: On the bus, the topic turned to social issues. Katie asked me if I thought it was possible to "pray away gay" - to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality through prayer. Hmmm, I thought. Odd question. I don't think she really wanted to hear my answer because she interrupted me five times as I tried to give it. The badgering had begun. This is really annoying me, I thought. The she asked me about abortion and the morning-after pill twelve times. Twelve different times.I answered as graciously and as patiently as I could. Each time, I reiterated my pro-life, pro-woman, pro-adoption position. But no matter how many ways I tried to say it, Katie responded by asking her question again in a slightly different way. I began to feel like I was in the movie Groundhog Day.(p. 277)
Ok, enough Katie Couric and "Going Rogue" for now. I have to say: Sarah Palin's book is highly entertaining. It is a must-read, because never before was one able to witness so much insanity by a politician written down in a book.
Christopher Goff, I personally would like to thank you for this fascinating reading experience and for the fact that you published Sarah's book. A world without "Going Rogue" is already unimaginable. Never before has a politician exposed herself in such an embarassing way in front of a world-wide audience. What an achievement! Thanks, Harper Collins, for NOT fact-checking the book. I get the impression that you actually didn't like Sarah Palin too much - because you tell a "real friend" if he/she got something wrong, in order to help him/her. It's clear that you had no intention of helping Sarah and correcting her lies before they were going to be published.
Christopher Goff, have you ever dared to question Sarah Palin about her "pregnancy" with Trig? I think you should.
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UPDATE:
It looks that Harper Collins will soon have much more serious problems than a few citizen-bloggers discussing excerpts from "Going Rogue".
The Alaskan Republican politician and blogger Andrew Halcro (who is held in the highest regard by several of my sources in Alaska) today has posted an ominous "Monday comment" which Christopher Goff and his colleagues should not overlook.
According to the brief excerpts I've heard, the book seems like it's less about her and more about blaming everybody around her for all of her short comings. From her lack of intelligence to her pregnant daughter, no matter what the problem or criticism, it's always somebody elses fault and never hers.
However, once the book is on the street beginnig Monday, those throughout Palin's 413 page pity party that suffer the wild blows of her imagination will come forward with guns blazing to refute the revisionist history Palin has penned.
From the brief passages that Palin has written about me in her book, the terms unmitigated lies, narcissistic delusions and libel came to mind first.
Obviously she never learned the timely Confucius warning:
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
Beginning Monday...the people whom Palin has attacked in her book will start reaching for their own shovels.
From all that I have heard about Andrew Halcro so far, he is a man who means business.
For all the people who have not heard about Andrew Halcro yet or don't know him very well, you can watch Andrew Halcro in this clip, taken during the campaign for the Alaskan Governship in 2006, where Andrew Halcro ran as an Independent. In the clip, Andrew Halcro discusses with Sarah Palin what they would do if their daughters were raped and found that they were pregnant as a result of it. Please take an educated guess what Sarah Palin's answer was...
After so many heavy thoughts about pregnancies, religious nuts etc. during the last few days, it is time for some comedy. Therefore, here is some light relief for you - enjoy!
This is one of my all time Palin-comededy favourites - the "Daily Show" visits Wasilla ("real America") and tries to find out what the Mayor of Wasilla actually does:
Some of our readers have wondered how Sarah Palin will perform in the Oprah interview. Well, we all know how the journalist-graduate loves to bypass those questions. Here are some examples.